Nimble Books LLC » Books I Won’t Be Reading

‘In Fed We Trust’ by David Wessel

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:41:39 +0000

I was all excited about reading this until I went to the Ann Arbor Library and found that Wessel’s previous book was Prosperity : the coming twenty-year boom and what it means to you / Bob Davis and David Wessel (1998).

As William Goldman said about Hollywood, “No one knows anything.”

David Wessel’s new book “In Fed We Trust” is essential, lucid — and, it turns out, riveting — reading.

In these pages Mr. Wessel, the economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, chronicles how the Fed chairman Ben S. Bernanke, with Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary, and a small group of associates, frantically worked to shore up the United States economy, capturing how this handful of people — “overwhelmed, exhausted, beseeched, besieged, constantly second-guessed” — tried to catch and stabilize one toppling fiscal domino after the next.

In this volume Mr. Wessel uses his narrative gifts and a plethora of sources to give readers a vivid, highly immediate sense of what transpired in last-minute, high-pressure, seat-of-their-pants meetings in Washington and New York while placing these events in a broader historical context. He examines the Fed’s increasingly important (and increasingly debated) role as an economic first responder, looks at how personality and personal philosophy can inform policy making and offers a concise explication of the causes of what he calls “The Great Panic.”

via Books of The Times – ‘In Fed We Trust’ by David Wessel and ‘A Colossal Failure of Common Sense’ by Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson – Inside the Meltdown and the Race to Contain It – Review – NYTimes.com.

Peters Cancels #Streisand Book Under Threat of Lawsuit | The Wrap

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:55:35 +0000

Who?

This is a celebrity who is definitely past his sell-by date. This will wind up saving HarperCollins a lot of money.

Barely 24 hours after details of his book proposal leaked widely onto the Internet, Hollywood producer Jon Peters has turned down a $700,000 offer from Harper Collins to publish an autobiography promising salacious details from his life with Barbra Streisand and as the head of Sony Pictures.

via Peters Cancels Book Under Threat of Lawsuit | The Wrap.

#queryfail paranormal public health experts

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:52:31 +0000

“Bug: The War Against the World’s Smallest Terrorists” by Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman

If there were ever two authors who should absolutely not be allowed to write about public health, it is these two …

Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman are the authors of “11:11- The Time Prompt Phenomenon: The Meaning Behind Mysterious Signs, Sequences and Synchronicities,” and “The Resonance Key: Exploring the Links Between Vibration, Consciousness and the Zero Point Grid.” They are co-founders of ParaExplorers,

via Publishers Marketplace: Rights News and Offerings.

Should “Internet Style” be “tech-driven”? IMHO: No.

wfz-admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:25:49 +0000

Disagree with a couple of the premises here.

Communications style isn’t about meeting audience expectations. It’s about an uncompromising personal commitment to absolute precision in expression.

And style should never, ever, be tech-driven.

The Elements of Internet Style will open your eyes to the major tech-driven trends in publishing—and Web-driven audience expectations—that no professional communicator can afford to ignore.

via EEI Communications – EEI Press.

Books I Won’t Be Reading > Werewolf books

wfz-admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:21:50 +0000

Like vampire books, these werewolf titles are absolutely infesting the bookshelves today. I don’t find them as objectionable as the vampire genre, becuase I think they appeal to a more healthy set of fantasies, but, generally speaking, they’re pretty dumb.

Christine Johnson’s CLAIRE DE LUNE, in which a teenager learns that she is a werewolf, descended from a long line of female werewolves, and must balance her human and werewolf lives, while tracking down the rogue werewolf preying upon the people of her town

via Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals.

Books I Won’t Be Reading: Vampire Anthologies

wfz-admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:59:35 +0000

I won’t be reading this because I hate all vampire books. I think vampire stories are inherently sadistic and wrongly fascinated with power and control. I recommend that all vampire fans read Terry Pratchett’s funny, frightneing, and wise CARPE JUGULUM, which should put their love of the vampire to rest forever. With a stake through its heart.

John Joseph Adams’s BY BLOOD WE LIVE, a reprint anthology of the best vampire literature of the last few decades, containing stories by Stephen King, Joe Hill, Neil Gaiman, Carrie Vaughn, Kelley Armstrong, Harry Turtledove, and Garth Nix, among others,

via Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals.

Books I Won’t Be Reading: Madoff Whining

wfz-admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:19:37 +0000

It should be self-explanatory why I won’t be reading this …

Author and former Self editor Alexandra Penney’s book, based on her blog as the Bag Lady at The Daily Beast about learning to live without all the money she lost in the Bernie Madoff fraud,

via Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals.

Worst-Timed Book Ever? Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds (Hachette)

wfz-admin — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:52:20 +0000

This has got to be the worst timed book in history. Unless maybe for DO-IT-YOURSELF SUBPRIME MORTGAGE SECURITIZATION or GET RICH WITH CHRYSLER.

Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds

Everything You Need to Make Millions Right Now

By Wayne Weddingtonr

FULL DESCRIPTION

Even with the recent upheaval and turmoil on Wall Street, it’s still currently estimated that the hedge fund industry exceeds one trillion dollars in assets, and continues to expand. Hedge funds are all over the news, as their managers become multi-millionaires and seemingly come up with new, increasingly ostentatious ways to spend their massive fortunes. And until now, the average investor has been kept out of this world, being led to believe that one needs a MBA from a top university and millions of dollars to invest. … more

via Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds – Hachette Book Group USA.

S&S proposal on reversion rights minor problem compared to HANNIBAL RISING

wfz-admin — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:20:52 +0000

Random House | Books | Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

ABOUT THIS BOOK

HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERS
IN ALL OF LITERATURE.

AT LAST THE EVOLUTION OF HIS EVIL
IS REVEALED.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck.

All the people who are getting exercised about the Simon & Schuster POD rights controversy would do better to direct their attention in this direction. To my mind, the popularity of books like this, that simply glorify evil, is a far more serious problem than a trifling Kabuki play about eminently negotiable rights.

Technorati Tags: Simon & Schuster, reversion, POD, Hannibal Rising, Thomas Harris

Villain: Vernon Winfrey Joins Oprah’s Book Club

wfz-admin — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:36:49 +0000

Dad’s book is no Oprah pick

It could be a chilly Father’s Day for Oprah Winfrey ’s dad.

The talk queen tells us she’s “shocked” and “disappointed” that she had to hear it from the Daily News that her 74-year-old pop, Vernon, is writing a book about her.

Winfrey said she laughed recently when “one of my assistants said, ‘The Daily News is calling. They say they heard your father is writing a book about you.’ I said, ‘That’s impossible. I can assure them it’s not true.’

“But then my sister said, ‘I think you should call your father.’ I called him and it turned out he is writing a book. The worst part of it was him saying, ‘I meant to tell you I’ve been working on it.’ ”

Winfrey, 53, confided, “I was upset. I won’t say ‘devastated,’ but I was stunned.”

“The last person in the world to be doing a book about me is Vernon Winfrey,” she added. “The last person.”

Oprah was 14 and pregnant when she left her mother’s home in Milwaukee to live with her father in Nashville. Her baby died weeks after he was born. She has said before that she’s grateful to her father for helping her go on, for teaching her discipline and the importance of education.

Nevertheless, Vernon, who plans to call his book, “Things Unspoken,” was quoted as saying he should have been tougher on her, because Oprah was “out of hand and an unruly child.”

“I have a good relationship with him,” Oprah told us Sunday, when she received the Elie Wiesel Foundation Humanitarian Award at the Waldorf. Though she hasn’t seen Vernon since he accompanied her on a trip to Africa a few months ago,
she said, “We talk, we talk, we talk.”

That’s why “I would have preferred to have known my father was working on this. It would have been a nice gesture, a courtesy,” she said.

OK, Vern: you’re the dad. No matter how famous she gets, it’s your job to protect your daughter.

Technorati Tags: Oprah, Father’s Day