Boy Wonder of Wall Street: The Life and Times of Financier Eddie Gilbert

Book Description

Ever oscillating between absolute triumph and failure, the volatile life of the acrobatic financial genius Eddie Gilbert is a drama bordering on Shakespearean proportions. Jailed two times and on his way to making his third fortune, Eddie Gilbert's is a most entertaining real life story. Although reminiscent of famous financiers, such as Michael Milken, Gilbert's story has yet to be heard.

Customer Reviews:

Great book!.......2003-09-04

Pick it up and you won't be able to put it down!

Need a new hero in your life?.......2003-08-30

Richard Whittingham has always produced exciting and important books (in military history, police novels, sports history, etc.). So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when I picked up his latest, "Boy Wonder of Wall Street" (biography), and had trouble putting it down. But I was surprised. After all, what's to admire about another financier (yawn), especially one who has been labeled an "embezzler" and a "crook"(ugh)? Well, Whittingham has produced again. "Boy Wonder" is spellbinding. It's a consistently surprising, revealing and ultimately heart-warming tale of a truly unforgettable character. Rarely in biography (and fiction, for that matter) is an ending of sweet redemption so winningly delivered --- and I have given away nothing with that statement except that this is a terrific read that will stay with you a long time. Need a new hero in your life? Eddie Gilbert's your man. Five stars!

The Many Lives of Eddie Gilbert.......2003-06-05

I have known Eddie Gilbert personally for over a decade, and I find that at 80 years old he continues to work as hard as most people in their 30's. He is a driven man, whose ambition is boundless.

This recent book is a swift read and covers the major events in Eddie's life in a well researched and balanced way. From the heights of two separate fortunes to the depths of two jail stints, it is really an amazing story. The most amazing part is that it is true. Eddie Gilbert is still making history today as a very, very successful real estate investor. Everything he touches turns to gold. He is a very loyal family man, who values friendships and would do everything to follow through on his word.

I recommend reading the book, not for its literary merits, which are very modest, but for the truly extraordinary story of the many lives of Eddie Gilbert.

Best business book of the year!.......2003-06-01

This well written book is a facinating review of a very intelligent man that made some poor decisions early in his career and spent most of his life redeeming himself to the public and his friends. It is wonderful to read about his ultimate success in overcoming the adversity of the press, the legal system and the cutthroat Wall Street environment. The book illustrates that it is possible to have been in jail and to be financially successful and respected by family and business associates alike in the end.

The author did a excellent job of researching the material that has resulted in a very factual, objective narrative... but it still reads like a novel!

I would strongly recommend purchasing this book, particularly if you are a business leader that must make people judgements.

Book Description

An award-winning actor on screen and stage (The Defiant Ones, The African Queen, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof), an activist for civil rights and progressive causes worldwide, and a singer whose voice has won him great applause, Theodore Bikel here tells his own compelling life story. Born in Austria, raised in Palestine, educated in England, and with a stellar career in the United States and around the world, Bikel offers a personal history parallel to momentous events of the twentieth century. In an eloquent, fiercely committed voice, he writes of the Third Reich, the birth of the State of Israel, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, and the tumultuous 1960s in America. In a new postscript to this paperback edition, he looks at recent events in the Middle East and takes both sides to task for their excesses.

Customer Reviews:

Too Interesting to be missed!.......2003-09-09

"Theo" is a wonderful journey through the life of an interesting, entertaining, many faceted person. You'll be facinated to follow him from his birth place in Vienna, through his many travels and career to his comments on the present day world conditions.

He is a jack of all trades and master of all!

Theo Bike - A Renaissance Man.......2003-04-13

Theodore Bikel's name is syynonymous with the Arts. His autobiography detailing his years on the London and Broadway stage and his Hollywood film career is stuffed with anecdotes about actors and legends. It brings a real sense of living that charmed life. I enjoyed every minute of his story.

His experiences escaping the Nazis as a child, his passion for folk music, and his stewardship of actors' and civil rights show him as a champion of the less fortunate and a righteous individual. This is the story of a totally expansive life and in spite of my earlier knowledge and enthusiasm for his work and music, I came away with greater insights and understanding of the man's drive and achievement. It's a great book. I recommend it to every theator-goer, activist, music lover, and any soon-to-be fan of Theo Bikel.

This should be in every home library.......2003-01-22

I first discovered Theo when I was in college -- and a friend of mine found some folk music records of his at a campus record store.

Then I discovered he's an actor. And a writer. He's written some wonderful books on folk music, with the stories that go with the music. He wrote the back jacket copy for the records, and it opened gateways into the music and out of the music into the world that music came from.

He's appeared on almost all the major hit TV series. Most memorable for me is that he is/was Ivanova's Uncle on Babylon 5 and Worf's human father on Star Trek: DS9 etc.

You surely know who he is -- you've seen him again and again.

But only a true die-hard fan like me -- who goes to his concerts whenever I can -- picks up enough about his life history to get a feel for where this immense talent comes from.

Theo is one of the major influences that led me to become a professional sf writer. Today, I play his CD's and tapes made from the old vinyl in my car -- and it gives me the strength and energy to keep on. Keeping-on has begun to pay-off! Just today, I have another new title now available on amazon.[com], The Unity Trilogy.

The story of Theo's life is the story of Art. And here and there you get to peek into the world as it was during some terrible war times -- and what it meant to escape all that horror.

This is a book to treasure. It should be available as an ebook download forever!

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

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Theo: An Autobiography
Theodore Bikel
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORTDYS

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THEO THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE BIKEL

Manufacturer: Harper Collins New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IAMRGC

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Theo. The Autobiography of Theodore Bikel.
Theodore Bikel
Manufacturer: Harper Collins.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JK2CZC

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Theo: The Autobiography of Theodore Bikel
Theodore Bikel
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEKADO

Average customer rating:

Go Simple - AFTER you buy this book!

Brilliant idea....but disappointing outcome.

Very Poor Excuse For Writing A Book--Who Cares About His Junk!

the sum of his parts

Absolutely wild!

All My Life for Sale
John Freyer
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Travel | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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Found II: More of the Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World

ASIN: 1582342512

Amazon.com

All right, 'fess up: at some point you've been in the apartment of a hipster friend and looked long and covetously at his or her collection of vintage View-Masters or '50s kitsch ashtrays. But then, why would anyone collect such cool knickknacks if not to impress their friends? Filmmaker John D. Freyer knows this feeling well, and from this impulse he's written a fascinating autobiography, charting his own story and a web of relationships with like-minded eccentrics via the cataloging in words and pictures of all the odd but neat stuff he spent twenty-something years accumulating.

As Freyer was preparing to leave graduate school in Iowa City to return to a typically small New York apartment, he decided to sell all his worldly possessions through eBay and his own Web site, allmylifeforsale.com. People bought his used socks, a can of Chunky Soup from his pantry, his Planet of the Apes LP, and a bag of small, roasted cuttlefish. The things Freyer sold would be junk to most, but they were treasures to him and his pals--a generation searching for a unique identity in an increasingly mass-produced, cookie-cutter age. Discovering how he came to own these things and who took them off his hands makes for a surprisingly intriguing and funny read in this beautifully designed and fabulously illustrated tome. --Jim DeRogatis

Book Description

The classic American passion for the road meets the current obsession with internet consumption in one of the most original illustrated books to come along in years.

One day, John Freyer decided to sell everything he owned on the internet. He invited his friends over to tag all the possessions in his apartment, and he systematically put them up for sale on eBay. An unopened box of taco shells, half a bottle of mouthwash, almost all of his clothes, his favorite records, his sideburns (in a plastic bag), his family's Christmas presents (not yet given), furniture: John didn't let sentiment or utility stand in his way. Soon his belongings were sold all over the world, with a bag of Porky's BBQ Pork Skins making its way to Japan, and a chair ending up in the Museum of Modern Art. With almost all the objects in his life now gone, he started the second phase of his journey: to go visit his one-time possessions in their new surroundings.

All My Life for Sale is an extraordinary book that functions as an autobiography, a travel narrative, and a meditation on what the objects we surround ourselves with actually mean to us and what happens when we set them free. Designed by the author himself, it is visually striking, surprisingly moving, and will change the way you look at the things that surround you.

Customer Reviews:

Go Simple - AFTER you buy this book!.......2007-08-11

This is such a beautiful book. Photos on nearly every page. It's really a work of art. As someone who lives in a very tiny apartment and is attracted to the idea of "simplifying", I'm super intrigued by the idea of purging all of my possessions. So ironic when I told the ever-so adorably-hip indy bookseller today, "I have to have this book right now." Acquire it and enjoy!

Brilliant idea....but disappointing outcome........2007-03-24

I bought this book because i thought the idea was brilliant.....a dude selling all his junk and traveling across country visiting the new owners of his former possessions.

I was extremely disappointed with this book. I was really hoping to read a chronicle of this guys travels across country meeting the strangers who bought his old possessions and how it changed their lives. All we get are quirky ebay descriptions of used junk, and the disappointed customers who bought them....many of whom didn't want to be apart of his project.

I was expecting a contemporary 'On the Road', but all I got was a mini blog about a college student's old junk.

It did inspire me to mail the book across country to a friend who might appreciate it more than I.

Very Poor Excuse For Writing A Book--Who Cares About His Junk!.......2006-05-03

I bought this book(cheaply thank goodness) thinking it would be an interesting memoir about selling on ebay. WRONG--it is nothing but photographs of the author's boring junk with small captions so we can all read the cutesy descriptions he wrote for ebay. About 60% of the items were purchased by his friends or people trying to help with this "project". Save your money--this is just pictures of dirty old clothes and canned food--not one interesting item--with very little commentary, most of which is self-conciously "hip" and cutesy.

I'm really sorry I wasted my money, but you don't have to.

the sum of his parts.......2006-03-08

I really loved the portrait of the thrift-shopping, travel-loving, childless single artsy young male that begins to emerge as the anecdotes attached to each auctioned item begin to pile up. A vicarious thrill to watch the project gather steam, to see all the people who get in on the fun of one person's creative and decidedly outside-the-mainstream creative project. In the spirit of Mail Art, Fluxus, and the child entrepreneurs who amuse themselves all weekend long peddling lemonade and broken toys from their stoop. One of those delights to page through again and again...

Absolutely wild! .......2005-11-09

So this guy, John Freyer, an art student (I think you'll understand him and this book better if you have some sort of understand of what avant garde and conceptual art is), decided that he was too bogged down by possessions, and he wanted to leave college the same way he began it- by all his worldly possessions crammed into his Honda Civic (I think it was). He began auctioning off EVERYTHING on Ebay, from his beloved collection of bowling shirts to a half-empty box of taco shells. And people bought it!

What's fascinating, though, is that he followed his possessions to their new homes. He went visiting some of his old stuff, driving cross country several times to do this. He found that in most cases, his new stuff was in a better home, more loved and prominently displayed than it had been when he owned it. Not only is this book an homage to the powers of the internet to make the world go round, it's an exploration of our personal attachments and all the memories that we attach to our possessions. Quick read, tons of pictures, and man, he had a lot of cool stuff.

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All the Days of My Life
Rh Value Publishing
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0517648857
Release Date: 1987-05-27

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July and August Idea Book: A Creative Idea Book for the Elementary Teacher
Karen Sevaly
Manufacturer: Teacher's Friend Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0943263107

Amazon.com

The authors of Learning Python show you enough essentials of the Python scripting language to enable you to begin solving problems right away, then reveal more powerful aspects of the language one at a time. This approach is sure to appeal to programmers and system administrators who have urgent problems and a preference for learning by semi-guided experimentation.

First off, Learning Python shows the relationships among Python scripts and their interpreter (in a mostly platform-neutral way). Then, the authors address the mechanics of the language itself, providing illustrations of how Python conceives of numbers, strings, and other objects as well as the operators you use to work with them. Dictionaries, lists, tuples, and other data structures specific to Python receive plenty of attention including complete examples.

Authors Mark Lutz and David Ascher build on that fundamental information in their discussions of functions and modules, which evolve into coverage of namespaces, classes, and the object-oriented aspects of Python programming. There's also information on creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Python applications with Tkinter.

In addition to its careful expository prose, Learning Python includes exercises that both test your Python skills and help reveal more elusive truths about the language.

Book Description

Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is the popular open source object-oriented programming language used for both standalone programs and scripting applications. Python is considered easy to learn, but there's no quicker way to mastery of the language than learning from an expert teacher. This edition of Learning Python puts you in the hands of two expert teachers, Mark Lutz and David Ascher, whose friendly, well-structured prose has guided many a programmer to proficiency with the language. Learning Python, Second Edition offers programmers a comprehensive learning tool for Python and object-oriented programming. Thoroughly updated for the numerous language and class presentation changes that have taken place since the release of the first edition in 1999, this guide introduces the basic elements of the latest release of Python 2.3 and covers new features, such as list comprehensions, nested scopes, and iterators/generators. Beyond language features, this edition of Learning Python also includes new context for less-experienced programmers, including fresh overviews of object-oriented programming and dynamic typing, new discussions of program launch and configuration options, new coverage of documentation sources, and more. There are also new use cases throughout to make the application of language features more concrete. The first part of Learning Python gives programmers all the information they'll need to understand and construct programs in the Python language, including types, operators, statements, classes, functions, modules and exceptions. The authors then present more advanced material, showing how Python performs common tasks by offering real applications and the libraries available for those applications. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises that will test your Python skills and measure your understanding. Learning Python, Second Edition is a self-paced book that allows readers to focus on the core Python language in depth. As you work through the book, you'll gain a deep and complete understanding of the Python language that will help you to understand the larger application-level examples that you'll encounter on your own. If you're interested in learning Python--and want to do so quickly and efficiently--then Learning Python, Second Edition is your best choice.

Customer Reviews:

very good book for us noobs.......2007-08-26

I'm an experienced C/C++ developer and needed to pick up python in a hurry for work. I ended up buying several python books to make sure I had all my bases covered. I've come to appreciate this book a lot.

It does two things very well. First, it gives you a good overview of the language. You can read the book front to back and it has a nice progression. You'll certainly know the basics if you do that.

Second, and probably more importantly, for those of us too impatient to read a book cover-to-cover, it serves as an excellent reference for beginners. When I started out there were all the little noob things that I found myself constantly having to look up. Like "how do you specify a comment?" or "how do you structure and if-block?" or "how to you get a substring out of a string". Very basic questions like this that many python books don't bother with because apparently they are too basic.

If there is a weakness, it's just that this book is rather small and only covers the very basics. So reading this book alone will certainly not make you a mighty python programmer, or even give you enough info to probably write something interesting. But this book definitely deserves a place on your bookshelf if you are starting out and need the basics.

teaches the language, but didn't convince me.......2007-08-05

I took some time off of work, and I really wanted to just relax and goof off. I'd won a Safari subscription in the Perl Foundation auction, and I wanted to put it to use. I added Learning Python to my bookshelf and had at it.

It's hard to separate Learning Python from learning Python, but I'll do what I can: I felt the writing was a bit dry. It didn't flow the way the Camel and Llama books did, and the attempts to inject humor were really awkward. For example, the author is excited to explain that Python is named after Monty Python, and that "foo" and "bar" are replaced with "spam" and "eggs." This sounds silly. In practice, it's distracting. My brain is used to reading code with foo and bar, and knows how to skip over them. "spam" and "eggs" makes it harder to read.

I guess this is trying to help me become familiar with Python culture, but it just bugged me.

Learning Python (the activity) made me realize that Python's most immediate failings were not the ones I'd heard bandied about. The whitespace thing has serious ramifications, but it wasn't keeping me from coding quickly. Instead, I found that the lambda syntax and statement/expression division in Python really, really got in the way.

The book didn't see this as a problem. It didn't even seem interested in acknowledging that some people thought it was a problem. It just said "lambdas are anonymous functions! Isn't that great?"* and moved on.

One of the best programming language books I've read was AppleScript: The Definitive Guide. The thing that made it a great book was the author's willingness to say, "Look, this is where the language is most insane and horrible." If the authors think that Python is always great, they should at least provide explanations of what pitfalls are avoided by the constraints that leave many outsiders grimacing.

In the end, I learned enough Python in a week to get through all the exercises and then refactor some goofy code I had inherited, confident of what I was doing. Considering that I was also relaxing, drinking beer, and playing video games through that whole week, I think the book lived up to its job.

It just didn't convince me to convert.

(* OK, I'm paraphrasing.)

This book is awful. Use the online tutorial instead........2007-07-28

I am an experienced Perl and C programmer who wanted to try something new, and everyone raves about Python. The language itself is great -- but this book is awful. Here's the really short form of why I think so:
- The point of Python (or any programming language) is to do things, not to marvel at how cool the language is. Reading the book, you can't do anything other than toy programs until you're almost all the way through. That's 400+ pages of reading before you can do anything more interesting than basic operations.
- The book isn't concise -- quite the opposite. The authors marvel at the implementation details of the language at the very start -- which takes up many pages and isn't really relevant for the beginning python programmer.
I finally just went to the online python tutorial[...]it covered most of the same topics with a lot fewer words, and was less confusing to boot.
- The reason I buy books rather than just use online resources is to use the exercises as a method of forcing myself to learn the language in a structured fashion. The exercises in the book are trivially easy: they're not about thinking and understanding, but regurgitating what the book said. Because you're not doing any real work until the 400-page mark, you can't do anything really interesting in the exercises or on your own (if you're just reading the book).

I've read a lot of "Learning XXX" books. This is by far the worst.

My recommendation is to skip this book and go straight to the online tutorial. You'll save trees, money, and time.

Great for experienced programmers.......2007-06-17

Learning Python is an efficient way to learn python if you are familiar with one or more other programming languages. The book does a nice job of comparing and contrasting python's qualities with those of other languages (C++ and Java in particular) and provides many concise examples that highlight specific features well. For me, Learning Python was a great way to get going with software development in python.

If you are fairly new to programming, however, this book probably isn't for you. The first few parts try to be a more general introduction to programming, but they aren't enough for those truly new to programming languages. As an experienced developer, you will likely skim through the first few parts of this book quickly.

It's also not an exhaustive reference manual, and with Python 2.5 now released the book is getting a bit dated. But the core language features have not changed much, and there is plenty of online material describing that changes since version 2.2/2.3 that this book is based on.

"Learning Python" is right.......2007-06-05

The title of this book says it all: "Learning Python" is a great book to read if you want to learn Python. Granted, Python is not the hardest language in the world to learn, and I'm not sure that this book goes into enough detail about Python's trickier features (generators, anonymous functions, etc.). Still, I was able to sit down, read this book, work through the examples, and walk away feeling like I really knew how to develop software in Python. Most learn-a-language books are too dense for you to learn the language from the book alone, but "Learning Python" definitely made it as easy as possible.

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