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So much has been written about the late Steve Jobs that Brent Schlender and his co-author, Rick Tetzeli, wisely begin their biography with a prologue that explains why they wrote yet another biography of the Apple co-founder. Schlender, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Fortune, became close to Jobs over twenty-five years of interviews, and was one of the few journalists Jobs trusted.
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Summary of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential recounts his transformation from an affluent child who sampled French cuisine during summer vacation to a rough-and-tumble chef who oversaw doomed and flourishing kitchens alike. Kitchen Confidential reveals the often disgusting environments where chefs sling out expensive meals for high-paying customers...
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Buy now to get the key takeaways from Clayborne Carson's The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sample Key Takeaways:
1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in a black, religious, lower-middle-class neighborhood.
2) His household situation was pleasant. His parents, Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King, were Christian people of profound integrity. They taught him the importance...
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1) Math prodigy Jimmy Simmons was born in 1938 into a modest family in Newton, Massachusetts. He was mischievous yet top of his class. He was quite the thinker. His friends would remark on how he would lay down doing nothing but thinking, mostly about mathematical theories and concepts.
2) By age 20, Simmons had already gotten engaged and graduated from MIT with a degree in math. He decided to study for his doctorate at Berkeley....
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Buy now to get the key takeaways from Brandi Carlile's Broken Horses
Sample Key Takeaways:
1) Brandi Carlile was born in a poor family. Her mother was a hostess and her father a breakfast prep cook. During her childhood, her family underwent multiple evictions, leading to recurrent moves around Washington State.
2) At age 4, Brandi contracted meningitis. Her illness put her into a coma, but she woke from it shortly after being admitted to the hospital....
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Summary of Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton is a sprawling biography of one of the most important figures in American history. It is based on copious original research, especially into Hamilton's early years. As a political theorist, a polemicist, and the first Treasury secretary, Hamilton dedicated his life, his intellect, and a seemingly limitless stream of words to the cause of unifying and strengthening the United States. He did perhaps more than...
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Summary of Lawrence Wright's The Terror Years is a collection of Wright's essays from The New Yorker and other venues about radical Islamic terror in the 2000s.
Terrorist activities are shaped by the experiences, ideology, and choices of terrorist leaders. The wave of international terrorism in the 1990s and 2000s came about in part because of the partnership of Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon. Al-Qaeda's...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Mohandas K. Gandhi's An Autobiography
Mohandas K. Gandhi's An Autobiography (1927) chronicles a life of sacrifice, abstinence, love, and humility. Gandhi recounts his life from his early childhood until 1921, tracing the painful and challenging path he took as he searched for Truth and utmost humility. He details the moral experiments he conducted through self-abnegation, and tackles the topics of child marriage,...
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Summary of Nathaniel Philbrick's Valiant Ambition focuses on the treachery of Benedict Arnold as it plays out against the wider panorama of the American Revolution.
Benedict Arnold was a courageous officer who was responsible for a number of crucial American victories during the Revolution. His brilliant conduct of the Battle of Valcour Island at Lake Champlain in 1776 delayed British forces and prevented them from reaching the Hudson River valley....
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Joe Scarborough's Saving Freedom
When he served in Congress, political commentator Joe Scarborough hung a portrait of Harry Truman in his office. This often surprised people, as Truman had left the White House with a low level of popular support. On top of that, Joe was a Republican and Truman a Democrat. But Joe identified most of all as a conservative, especially on foreign policy. Joe was a Cold War hawk,...
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Summary of David Allen's Getting Things Done is the revised second edition of a book on organization and productivity originally published in 2001. Allen takes readers through the implementation of his method for personal and professional productivity, beginning with the various messy piles of incomplete tasks many people have lying around and creating structured, trustworthy systems for capturing new tasks and deciding on the next action to take…...
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Summary of Jean Edward Smith's Bush is a biography of George W. Bush, the forty-third president of the United States. Bush was a talented politician with a sincere commitment to domestic policy issues such as education and Medicare expansion. However, his decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 was disastrous. It undermined his presidency and his legacy.
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Kayleigh McEnany's For Such a Time as This
If someone had told Kayleigh McEnany when she was in college that Donald Trump someday would ask her to become the White House press secretary, as a pandemic ravaged the world, she wouldn't have believed it.
In For Such a Time as This (2021), McEnany traces her remarkable path from college into the media and politics. As she chronicles her time in the White House, she...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died
Many of us who watched kiddie TV dreamed of having the lives of our favorite child stars. However, in her autobiography I'm Glad My Mom Died (2022), Jennette McCurdy shows us that childhood stardom can be far from a dream – and is closer to a nightmare. She presents a collection of vignettes from moments in her life when she felt she was abused by stardom, by weight...
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Summary of Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk is a memoir by Helen Macdonald. Macdonald had a life-long fascination with birds of prey, especially falcons, and the goshawk, a large wild bird of prey, is well known to bird enthusiasts as being the hardest to train. The book tells of her efforts to train the bird and process her grief over the loss of her father…
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Summary of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City is a book by Erik Larson that takes a close look at The World's Columbian Exposition, the world's fair that Chicago hosted in 1893, held in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America. The fair was tainted by deaths, a serial killer, and an assassination.
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Mike Ritland's Navy SEAL Dogs
In Navy SEAL Dogs (2013), Mike Ritland shines a light on the importance of military working dogs, especially the more advanced Special Operations Forces dogs and the role they play in the Navy SEAL military special force. He explains what differentiates SEAL dogs from household pets and details how they are trained so that they can be deployed in battlefields. Ritland also narrates...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Eric Blehm's Fearless
In Fearless (2012), Eric Blehm retraces the life of one of the most famed Navy SEALs - Adam Brown. Growing up in Arkansas, Adam developed into a hardworking and brave young man. Yet his involvement in drugs led him to jail and rehab, where he rediscovered his spirituality and his determination. Despite a hard path filled with injuries, relapses, and life-threatening dangers, he became one...
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