My Voice Will Go with You (Revisited)

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 29

This is Gerald Everett Jones, author of Mr. Ballpoint. My Boychik Lit book reviews air on The Mark Isler Show on Saturday nights (KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles). You may also know that these brief reviews are available as podcasts from BoychikLit.com, iTunes, and Feedburner. Now that I’ve done almost thirty reviews, I looked back to see which have been the most popular. The fifth most popular podcast, in terms of streaming plays and downloads, was Griftopia by Matt Taibbi. The fourth was The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, followed by Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam’s Firebase Kate by William Albracht and Marvin Wolf. But the top podcast, getting almost twice as many plays as any of the others, is a nonfiction book you probably never heard of.

Psychiatrist Milton Erickson is regarded as the father of neurolinguistic programming, or NLP. This book is a collection of very short stories he told clients who were in a trance state as a means of reprogramming their thinking about a problem they brought to him. Erickson believed that stories heard and then forgotten have the most power over future actions. That's because, once the conscious, censoring mind has ceased analyzing the experience, the persistent memory of the story can percolate in the unconscious. The book illustrates vividly the power of a story to transform thinking and behavior--immediately. The accompanying commentary by author Sidney Rosen tells why each story is effective in changing behavior.

My Voice Will Go with You. I sincerely hope it does.

Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate by William Albracht and Marvin J. Wolf

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 21

Here’s my book review of Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam’s Firebase Kate by William Albracht and Marvin J. Wolf.

In 1969 Bill Albracht was the youngest, greenest Green Beret captain in Vietnam. One night, six thousand of the enemy attacked his 200 troops. They held out for five days through heavy fire, sporadic aerial support, and hand-to-hand fighting. Given up for dead by the brass, Albracht led survivors through enemy lines under cover of darkness. He went on to become a Secret Service agent, and served four presidents.

Just three years earlier, Bill had passed the officer candidate exam by one point. His best friend Joe failed – also by one point. Albracht told Joe he might be the happier guy. Bill wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility.

Abandoned in Hell is not a Hollywood action-adventure story. It’s the real deal. Veterans know war as years of tedium interrupted by short periods of pure terror. In the case of Firebase Kate, those horrific moments stretched into five seemingly endless, bloody days, then a harrowing escape trekking through the jungle and open-field running in almost total darkness.

Albracht shielded the bodies of soldiers with his own. He carried fallen comrades through firefights – into a waiting chopper at the best of times, or just into a protective ditch.

This book is about what’s most inspiring about bravery under fire. It has little to do with wanting to fight or why you’re there. It’s doing the right thing by your friends, from one desperate moment to the next.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should … be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

I’m Gerald Everett Jones, author of Mr. Ballpoint about another man, who said, “If you want to do the impossible, you have to do it right away.” You can catch these podcasts at Boychik Lit.com.

"Griftopia" by Matt Taibbi

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 11

Here’s my book review of Griftopia by Matt Taibbi. It’s a fascinating, ultra-hip, and more or less comprehensible explanation of the financial bubble burst of 2008. It’s a disturbing investigative report. But let’s get real. We need to understand this stuff if we ever want to think and act like a responsible adults instead of brain-dead, wage-slave entertainment addicts.
Did you know that parking meters in Chicago are now owned by offshore investors? And that other big chunks of our municipal- and state-owned infrastructure, like parks, are being auctioned or leased to foreign interests? All because our government budgets are imploding and your friendly investment bankers have the fix -- just sell off the US of A in pieces while they take fat commissions on the deals.
If only chronically curious journalist Matt Tiabbi were some crack-head scribbler who made all this stuff up to sell books. If it weren’t the shameful truth, it would make a very funny movie.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. Read my humorous novel about wacky capitalists Mr. Ballpoint, and follow these podcasts at BoychikLit.com.

"The Arsenal of Democracy" by A. J. Baime

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 10 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles

The subtitle of this World War II history recaps the story: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm America at War. At its heart, it’s a father-son feud – between Nazi sympathizer and professed pacifist Henry Ford and his future-minded son Edsel. Against his father’s judgment, in 1941 Edsel answered FDR’s appeal for mass production of warplanes. Starting from bare farmland, the Ford company built the enormous Willow Run plant. Applying Henry’s assembly-line methods, it was capable of turning out one 60,000-pound bomber every day. Edsel thought it was perfectly reasonable to build one bomber every hour. The plant was operational in less than two years, when the Germans had been cranking out thousands of aircraft for more than a decade. That’s how fast and effectively American ingenuity met the challenge. It’s both inspiring and sobering, as we recognize that sometimes Big Government is called upon to do big things. Author A. J. Baime is an editor at Playboy magazine. This engaging story is proof that he’s more than a pretty face. For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My humorous novel Mr. Ballpoint is about a father and son who fought the wacky Pen Wars of 1945. You can find readings from the book in my BoychikLit.com podcasts.