By James Pressley
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Journalists clamber up and down the greasy pole of life in the two most-read Bloomberg book reviews for August.
In ``Ahead of the Curve,'' Philip Delves Broughton recalls quitting the Daily Telegraph to attend Harvard Business School, while David Carr, the New York Times media reporter, recounts his former life as a cocaine addict in ``The Night of the Gun.''
Other most-read reviews feature rude diners, a porn star and T. Boone Pickens. The top 10 were:
1. Harvard MBA Leaves With Great Access, Nice Book, No Job 8/04
2. White Trash Druggie Becomes New York Times Reporter 8/05
3. How Waiters Handle Rude Diners, Amorous Couples in Toilet 8/04
4. Porn Star, Ex-Nun Find Love in Unhinged Novel: Beach Read 8/14
5. Boone Pickens Hits Bottom, Bounces Back, Rings Oil Alarm 8/27
6. Ron Suskind Drops Bomb, Says CIA Forged Iraq Letter 8/18
7. Enron-Like Scandal Engulfs Company, Trophy Wife in Tale 8/26
8. Russia Sees China as `4,000 Kilometers of Problems' 8/13
9. Yalie's Sex-Crazed Rat Gnaws Books, Reads James Joyce 8/12
10. Hitler's Chemists Chased Auschwitz Profits, Paid Mengele 8/08
**List based on daily statistics through Aug. 29.
Harvard MBA Leaves With Great Access, Nice Book: Caroline Baum
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- What do some of the world's most successful business leaders, savviest entrepreneurs and reviled felons have in common?
Six initials: HBS MBA.
A Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School is such an elite calling card that Philip Delves Broughton quit London's Daily Telegraph to attend. ``Ahead of the Curve'' is the funny, insightful story of his experience.
White Trash Druggie Turns Reporter, Writes Book: Craig Seligman
Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- I try never to miss a story under David Carr's byline. The New York Times media reporter is talented, aggressive and witty. I had no idea until I read his memoir, ``The Night of the Gun,'' that he's a recovering alcoholic who was once a big-time cocaine addict.
How Waiters Handle Rude Diners, Amorous Couples: Richard Vines
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Try telephoning a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in London to book a table. You may be surprised by how much the person on the other end of the line knows about you.
The reservations clerk types your phone number into a computer-reservation system. Up pops your dining history, showing where, when and what you ate. It may also detail whether you screamed at the waiter, according to ``Waiter Rant.''
Porn Star, Ex-Nun Find Love in Unhinged Novel: Laurie Muchnick
Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Time travel isn't just for science fiction anymore. It's a surprising element in two of this season's juiciest beach reads, which usually run more toward sex, drugs and shopping (though there's some of that here, too).
Andrew Davidson's ``The Gargoyle'' reads like the mad spawn of Anne Rice and Stephen King, combining overripe prose and supernatural elements into a strangely irresistible confection.
T. Boone Pickens Scrapes Bottom, Bounces Back: James Pressley
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- T. Boone Pickens has been many things in his 80 years: oil man, corporate raider, shareholder activist and hedge-fund manager. One thing he's not is a quitter.
``The more people count me out, the more I count myself in,'' he writes in ``The First Billion Is the Hardest,'' a sassy mishmash of a book that begins as a memoir, segues into a management guide and closes with an energy plan for the U.S.
Suskind Says Bushies Told CIA to Forge Letter: Timothy R. Homan
Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- In ``The Way of the World,'' Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind paints a picture of a morally reprehensible White House.
He charges that the administration ordered the CIA to forge a document creating a link between the Sept. 11 terrorists and Saddam Hussein.
Enron-Like Scandal Engulfs Company, Trophy Wife: Jeffrey Burke
Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Asked to pick the worst-ever case of corporate chicanery, a writer of hardboiled crime novels named Lemuel Samuel ``couldn't decide between Enron and LinkAge.''
That telling moment linking fact and fiction comes in Jacqueline Carey's ``It's a Crime,'' a strangely comic morality tale featuring a telecom outfit called LinkAge, its acute accounting foibles and the $140 billion its shareholders lose.
Russia Sees China as 4,000 Kilometers of Trouble: George Walden
Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- So mesmerized is the West by the economic rise of China and the military might of Russia that we rarely ask how the two countries view each other.
So how does Russia perceive its biggest neighbor? Sometimes as a future partner, and other times with a mixture of fear, distaste and condescension, judging from a crop of recent Russian books about China.
Yalie's Sex-Crazed Rat Gnaws Books, Reads Joyce: James Pressley
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Firmin is a lascivious rat.
He lives in a dusty bookstore, ogles the lovelies at a local porn cinema and learns to read by chewing on the literature that surrounds him.
The runt of a litter, desperate and debonair by turns, he struggles to survive and find meaning in Sam Savage's darkly comic ``Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife.''
How Hitler's Chemists Chased Auschwitz Profits: James Pressley
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- A sweet stench filled the site in occupied Poland where I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was building a factory to feed Hitler's army with synthetic rubber and fuel.
Amid the hammering, barking dogs and screaming kapos, emaciated men unloaded cement bags at a trot, bent under iron girders, and died like animals. This was Buna-Werke, a.k.a. I.G. Auschwitz, and the cloying smell came from crematoriums, Diarmuid Jeffreys writes in his damning history, ``Hell's Cartel.''
(The columns were written by Bloomberg critics. The opinions expressed are their own.)
To contact the reporter on this story: James Pressley in Brussels at jpressley@bloomberg.net.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMERICAN PRESIDENTS AND FIRST LADIES PICTURES DOWNLOAD
Download the American presidents and first ladies pictures for only $2.95. You will be able to download all the 42 presidents' pictures from George Washington to the current president and the 43 first ladies' pictures from Abigail Washington to the current first lady in large size all at once in just one download.
DOWNLOAD NOW
