I don’t think you can find a harder working comedian like Kevin Hart, who told his life story starting from his humbling beginning being born into a single-parent family with a religious loving mom and a supportive elder brother. Occasionally, his father showed up sober and sometimes high scouting for money from his mother.
Without his mother, I don’t think Kevin could have been as successful he is today. The work ethics and tight leash his mother imposed on him turned him into one disciplined and persistent pursuer of success. Life taught him many lessons. He learned with earnest and kept wanting more out of life.
His life with his first wife was full of violence and remorse in cycles. He finally recognized it as it was and eventually broke it off and made good his relationships with his two children and his ex-wife.
Brushed with death by over drinking, he finally acknowledged after getting his DUI that he had jeopardized his and other people’s lives by driving under alcohol and got braver the drunker he was.
Most people don’t know how difficult it is to be a stand up comedian. At least I never realized how hard it is to “kill” the audience. Started out telling jokes at a shoe store while selling shoes, he turned his talent of making people laugh into a career and kept at it despite it didn’t pay much money in the beginning as he had to borrow money from his mom and others to make ends meet. Even when he reached a certain level of reputation, he still failed to get the movie deals or Saturday Night Live position. But he kept at it and went back to basics to do stand up and took advantage of the new social networking tool when he gradually gain the following of the fans.
It wasn’t a easy journey. Any aspiring comedian-want-to-be should read this book and learn from the master’s tips like not just telling jokes but telling and making his life stories laughable so that his own name brand becomes enduring. How you tell the stories are critical to get the most laugh separates the man from the boys. It took practices and frequent failures to get it just right.
Kevin Hart basically revealed his secrets to success in this book. I highly recommend this book if want a lot more out of your life that you don’t even know you’re capable of getting. I didn’t expect to be inspired by the book but I was.
When I say “Leonardo,” you say? Most people would say “Di Caprio.” No, today I’m going to tell you and show you the story of Leonardo Da Vinci – an imaginative, ever curious and creative genius across multiple disciplines.
Ever wondered how the tongue of a woodpecker look like? Not I but he did. He noted on his notebook to look into it.
Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452 in a little town, Vinci, near Florence, Italy. “Da Vinci” wasn’t really his surname but a way to identify him as the Leonardo from Vinci. He was born out of wedlock to a long lineage of notary professional. Luckily as an illegitimate son of Piero, he wasn’t able and willing to carry on the family tradition of notary.
As a “bastard,” he was never properly educated in Latin school to be a man of letters, instead he was mostly self-taught and become a disciple of experience and experiment. He lived through most of his childhood in Vinci until his step mother died in childbirth and his grandfather died shortly after. His father brought him, a teenager, to Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance era and center of finance, trades, arts and knowledge. The city was run by wealthy bankers, then the innovators of debit-credit bookkeeping, who could afford to sponsor artists and entertainments like plays and carnivals. Think Manhattan, NY.
Recognizing Leonardo’s talents at 14 years old, his father secured an apprenticeship with one of his clients, Verrocchio, who ran one of the best workshops / sweatshops in Florence. This was where the students cranked up paintings, statutes for rich clients. When his father brought a wood shield for him to paint, he turned into an image of fire-breathing dragon-like monster with parts from dead animals like lizards, snakes, and bats.
In painting, his genius lied in his ability to see and deploy light and shade in ways that would produce the illustration of three-dimensional effect because of human eyes in resolving direct vs peripheral views.
Through his work in theatrical set, he mastered the theatrical movements, human expressions. His curiosity about human anatomy drove him to dissect at least 30 corpses. This was before refrigeration was invented so the dissection typically stopped when the smell from decaying flesh got to him. He came up with the theory about how human heart value work that was confirmed in 1950’s, more than 4 centuries after.
Leonardo was fascinated with military engineering. He conceptualized helicopter and came up with various military weapon designs like the chariots, giant bow machines.
Due to his curiosity about just everything in nature, he was frequently delinquent in delivering his work. He had to move around to find patrons. He moved around Florence, Milan and Rome.
One of his famous paining is the Last Supper. This was painted on the wall of Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
In his middle age, he was frequently compared to the Michelangelo, who was 23 years younger. Both were openly gay and wonderfully talented. No wonder it was called the Renaissance.
In his old age, he moved to France as King Francis I became his final patron. He died in 1519 at age of 67.
Leonardo Da Vinci left us with at least 15 paintings without his signatures, 7200 pages of undated notes that left us intrigued about him as he was intrigued by nature, and wonders of the world.
This story is based on the book “The Fish That Ate The Whale” by Rich Cohen.
I’m going to tell you a story about this guy, Sam Zemurrary, the Banana Man.
Some interesting facts about banana: banana is technically not a fruit but a berry that grow on a herb plant, not tree, and is tallest grass and largest plant without a woody trunk. Banana plant grows from a rhizome (like orchid or lotus) and has no roots and no seeds so it can only be propagated from a cutting. In other words, a banana species are all clones. This means, one disease that kills one banana plant can wipe out an entire species due to lack of genetic diversity. This has happened to a few species like “Big Mike” and “Cavendish.” So enjoy your banana while you can!
Enough about banana but why does it have to do with Sam Zemurray, the Banana Man? I don’t think there another person whose story is more entangled with a fruit or a berry than he was. Let me tell you his story.
Sam Zemurray, a Russian Jew, arrived in America in 1891 at age fourteen. He was tall, gangly and penniless. He saw a banana in 1893 for the first time, 20 years into American banana trade during the hay day of the steam-engine boats. Banana just became a popular, exotic imported luxury fruit. It can’t be easily grown in the US and even more difficult to transport due to its short shelf life and natural vulnerability. The 6-ft-3 Zemurray started out as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, then a dockside hustler. He settled in New Orleans, got married at age of 31. His daughter was born a year later. He wanted to give her the best he could offer like most immigrant parents. To do that, he needs to grow his company and his supplier base. Where? Central America.
The first time Sam Zemurray visited Honduras, he bought 5000 acers of north-coast “junk” land immediately for $2000, all borrowed. Then he borrowed more and bought more land. Leveraging his knowhow from growing up in a Russian farm, he turned the land into a fertile banana farm. He bribed the Honduras government officials into giving him the best tax break. When the Honduras government tried to back out of the tax exemption sweet deal, he organized a mercenary team and overthrew the government. He ended up with an even better tax break.
When he expanded his plantation into Guatemala, he started butting against United Fruit’s territory. United Fruits was the biggest banana company at that time. As the conflicts between the two companies escalated within Guatemala, the US government stepped in to avoid destabilizing the region. Urged by the US government, both companies were forced to merge and occupy 64% of banana market share with anti-trust immunity. Zemurray walked away with shares of United Fruits, worth about $30M in 1929, or $420M now.
Was he ready to retire? Not quite. The Great Depression hit, he saw his shares of United Fruits dropped to only 10% or $3M. He came up with plan to turn around the company. When he presented his plan to the Board of Director, he was mocked, and turned away. A few months later, he returned to the Boston headquarter with proxy votes and fired the board and the CEO. Zemurray took over United Fruits as its CEO.
Then World War II happened. The banana ships were being sunk by German’s U-boats during transport. If that wasn’t bad enough, a personal tragedy hit him hard when his son’s, Sam Zemurray Jr’s plane went down and died in Africa serving as an Air Force pilot during the war. He was heart broken and started searching the true life meaning.
Up to 1948, he was never involved in any political advocacy for Jews. Surprisingly, he stepped down from his CEO position, and devoted his time to making sure Israel secured its statehood with 2/3 of the United National’s General Assemblies by influencing or bribing the several central America countries to vote yes. The state of Israel was born.
Zemurray eventually returned to United Fruits, which was forced to break up by US government to 3 smaller companies after involving itself in Central America conflicts during the Communist uprising – central character, Fidel Castro. Today we see pieces of United Fruits in Dole, Del Monte and others. United Fruits eventually became Chiquita as we know today after several ownership changes.
Samuel Zemurray died in 1961 at the ripe age of 84 with an estimated fortune of $30M, a big chunk of which he donated to local universities like Tulane.
Killing the Rising Sun is one of those books that attract people to read about the history. As the saying goes, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat.” And I sincerely hope the history of World War II would not repeat. World War II didn’t happen too long ago; it was in my parents’ generation when it happened and is still vivid in their memory. We baby boomers and future generations benefited enormously from the sacrifices their generation made. All I knew was US dropped 2 atomic bombs in Japan in retribution to their attack on Pearl Harbor and quickly wrapped up the war. Oh, there were a few skirmishes in between trying to take over some islands for military bases.
Not so quick, there were so many events that happened and so many lives lost on both sides. In this book, the authors wrote a vivid chronology of how the U.S. was involved in World War II, the background stories of the European War, and the how U.S. refocused to fight Japan after that war was wrapped up with Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945. From the Japanese’s attack on the Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 to the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 was a long nearly 4-year war. These days, it’s hard to imagine to be in a war that lasts more than a few days.
Overall, the stories read like a novel but that’s trivializing the many thousands of lives lost. It was riveting and mesmerizing – many of stories were told as observed by real people, instead of describing the general fact. Though we all knew what happened in the end. I kept on listening to the audiobook attentively, lest I missed anything. Very good read and a must read for those we can’t appreciate what good lives we’ve got now.
The book started with the battle of Pelelius, a Japan-occupied island near Philippines. This was the MacArthur’s triumphant return on his way to retake Philippines. On chapter 3, Harry Truman, a humble Missouri native came into the picture as the Vice President, after helping FDR re-elected. Quickly, the story moved toward the last year of the World War II when German’s surrender is almost secured when FDR gave away East Europe to Stalin of Russia and putting his focus on fighting Japan. Then MacArthur retook Philippines as the Iwo Jima battle was being concluded around February and March of 1945. These were important battle fronts that paved the way for US to get close to Japan for dropping the Atomic Bombs. Starting from Chapter 9 (about one third of the book), Truman inherited the US Presidency from FDR then the spotlight of the story was on the Atomic Bombs: the development and testing and the final drops. The fall of Okinawa on June 23, 1945, set up the final stage of the invasion of Japan that MacArthur wanted but it’s not up to him. There was a detailed description of the events leading to the sinking of USS Indianapolis by Japan’s I-58 submarine. Finally, the two Atomic Bombs: Little Boy and Fan Man sealed the fate of Japan’s surrender.
– The book started with a letter by Albert Einstein to Franklin Roosevelt on a potential weapon that could be made using his Relativity Theory in triggering in splitting an atom (E= MC^2). FDR almost didn’t get it until the second time he heard about it. The Manhattan project was seeded on October 12, 1939 – almost 6 years before the bombs were dropped in Japan. Ironically, Einstein’s was never invited to the Manhattan Project to build the Atomic bomb because his “security” risk.
– The story about General MacArthur was less than flattering. I knew a little about his insubordination from the book Truman by David McCullough. It’s very clear that both FDR and Truman hated his guts. I don’t blame Truman though and would do the same thing by giving him a cold shoulder and not notifying of the A-bomb until a few days before they were dropped. MacArthur was famous for making grand shows in the public by having his “return” photographed and his towering photo over Emperor Hirohito after the war ended.
– It appears the premise of God-given “superior race” armed the German and Japanese soldiers with great courage and brutality against the “other inferior” races. It’s pretty sad that humans or the power, like the Japanese Emperor, propagated such myths to stay in the power. From these historical facts, shouldn’t we name racism as the source of all wars and evils?
– Kamikaze, the suicide planes, changed the war tactics. It’s very difficult to fight people or terrorism for that matter when your enemy is willing to commit suicide to win. This was a big headache for US Navy at that time. Many ships were destroyed as a result.
– The firebombs consists of cylinders of napalms destroyed a big parts of the cities including Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Kawasaiki and more than a million residents lost. but they didn’t make the same impact as the Atomic Bombs.
– The torpedo and sinking of of USS Indianapolis by a no-name Japanese submarine I-58 was rather ironic. USS Indianapolis carried the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian island before being sunk on its way to Manila. The rescue mission was accidental – how do you lose a battleship without people’s being aware of it? It’s a little Japanese victory that didn’t turn the tide for Japan but Charles McVay, the captain at helm, paid the price by committing suicide 23 years later.
– The second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was made for a Hollywood movie. The Bockscar B-29 plane couldn’t find its target and moved to Nagasaki target instead. It almost didn’t make it as back as it ran out of fuel upon its arrival at Okinawa – couldn’t even taxi off. And then the bomb was falsely activated in the air. So much excitement. At the end, it did its job of convincing Japan to surrender itself.
– The capture of Hideki Tojo at his farmhouse, despite his own failed suicide, a bullet that missed most of his critical organs, was an interesting, ironic story. He was later hanged for his war crimes.
– Emperor Hirohito escaped any war crime committed throughout the war was simply amazing to me. How MacArthur orchestrated the saving of his God-like face in front of the Japanese people, citing him as the stability factor. To me, that’s an oversight and atrocity.
– Russian’s invasion into China’s Manchuria and declaring war against Japan helped forcing Japan’s unconditional surrender. Later, it turned over the territory to the Communist China and contributed the demise of Chiang Kai Shek’s KMT.