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The JFK Conspiracy Written by Brad Meltzer and John Mensch Prologue Palm Beach, Florida December 11, 1960 No one notices the car. It's been there for a while, parked on one side of a quiet residential street. The morning is bright, with the sun shining through the tall, leafy trees that line the roadside. If anyone were to look in the car's direction, nothing about it would seem unusual. It's a 1950 Buick sedan, not a fancy or noteworthy vehicle. And if anyone happened to glimpse the man sitting behind the wheel, they wouldn't think anything unusual about him either. He's an older man, with short white hair and a wide face. His dress and appearance are typical. He looks like any other motorist in South Florida, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the United States. Across the street from the parked car, a scene is unfolding that isn't so typical. A small group of men stand or pace just outside the entrance gate of a walled-off private estate. They're dressed professionally and wear sunglasses, sometimes whispering to one another. They seem to be waiting for something or someone to appear from inside the grounds. Soon enough, someone does appear, a tall, trim man in his early forties wearing a suit, with perfect posture and short, carefully parted, reddish-brown hair. He's flanked by a few other men, who greet or nod at those who are waiting outside the property's gates. The man's face is memorable, with tanned skin and a bright smile. It's not just any face. Unlike the motorist, he's got one of the most recognized faces in the country. Soon he'll be the most recognized in the world. This is John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who, a month earlier, was elected to be the 35th President of the United States. Six weeks from now, he'll take the oath of office and occupy the White House. John F. Kennedy's election was one of the closest and most bitterly fought in American history. He won the popular vote over his opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon of California, by the smallest margin in the 20th century. When it came to the Electoral College, several states had razor-thin margins that could have swung the victory in the other direction. It was the first election in U.S. history to be fully televised.
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EINSTEIN, HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE Written by Walter Isaacson Now that his archives have been completely opened, it is possible to explore how the private side of Einstein, his nonconformist personality, his instincts as a rebel, his curiosity, his passions and detachments intertwine with his political side and his scientific side. Knowing about the man helps us understand the wellsprings of his science and vice versa. Character and imagination and creative genius were all related, as if part of some unified field. Despite his reputation for being aloof, he was in fact passionate in both his personal and scientific pursuits. In college, he fell madly in love with the only woman in his physics class, a dark and intense Serbian named Mileva Maric. They had an illegitimate daughter, then married and had two sons. She served as a sounding board for his scientific ideas and helped to check the math in his papers. But eventually their relationship disintegrated. Einstein offered her a deal. He would win the Nobel Prize someday, he said. If she gave him a divorce, he would give her the prize money. She thought for a week and accepted. Because his theories were so radical, it was 17 years after his miraculous outpouring from the patent office before he was awarded the prize, and she collected.
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The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Something has gone terribly wrong. Rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among young people have exploded in the last decade. We're failing to protect the rising generation. We've handed them phones and watched as childhood has been rewired. Play-based childhood is disappearing. Kids are spending their time in a virtual world, often alone, often comparing themselves to others. They're fragile. Resilience isn't built in a bubble. We need to give kids back their childhood. We need to let them roam, let them play, let them fail. We need to change course.
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THE STORY OF MANHATTAN Written by Charles Hempstreet The long and narrow island of Manhattan was a wild and beautiful spot in the year 1609. In this year a little ship sailed up the bay below the island, took the river to the west and went on. In these days there were no tall houses with white walls glistening in the sunlight, no church fires, no noisy hum of running trains, no smoke to blot out the blue sky. None of these things. But in their place were beautiful trees with spreading branches, stretches of sand hills and green patches of grass. In the branches of these trees were birds of varied colors, and wandering through the tangled undergrowth were many wild animals. The people of the island were men and women whose skins were quite red, strong and healthy people who clothed themselves in the furs of animals and made their houses of the trees and vines. In this year of 1609 these people gathered on the shore of their island and looked with wonder at the boat, so different from any they had ever seen, as it was swept before the wind up the river. The ship was called the Half Moon. It had come all the way from Amsterdam in the Dutch Netherlands. The Netherlands was quite a small country in the northern part of Europe, not nearly as large as the state of New York, and was usually called Holland, as Holland was the most important of its several states. But the Dutch owned other lands than these. They had islands in the Indian Ocean that were rich in spices of every sort, and the other European countries needed these spices. These islands, being quite close to India, were called the East Indies, and the company of Dutch merchants who did most of the business with them was called the East India Company. They had many ships, and the Half Moon was one of them. It was a long way to the East India Islands from Holland, for in these days there was no Suez Canal to separate Asia and Africa, and the ships had to go around Africa by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Besides being a long distance, it was a dangerous passage, for although from its name one might take the Cape of Good Hope to be a very pleasant place, the winds blew there with great force, and the waves rolled so high that they often dashed the fragile ships to pieces. So the merchants of Holland, and of other countries for that matter, were always thinking of a shorter course to the East Indies. They knew very little of North or South America, and believed that these countries were simply islands, and that it was quite possible that a passage lay through them which would make a much nearer and a much safer way to the East Indies than around the dread Cape of Good Hope. So the East India Company built the ship Half Moon, and got an Englishman named Henry Hudson to take charge of it, and started him off to find a short way. Hudson was chosen because he had already made two voyages for an English company, trying to find that same short passage, and was supposed to know ever so much more about it than anyone else. When the Half Moon sailed up the river, Hudson was sure that he had found the passage to the Indies, and he paid very little attention to the red-skinned Indians on the island shore. But when the ship got as far as where Albany is now, the water had become shallow, and the river banks were so near together that Hudson gave up in despair, and said that, after all, he had not found the eagerly sought-for passage to India, but only a river.
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The stories I'm about to tell here are by no means all of them, just a few that is still in the forefront of my memory. Sitting by the window on the plane looking out over the country where I was born, as if lifted off the runway in California, the cold reality sets in that I may never see my home again. I forced myself to stop thinking like this. Instead of these thoughts, I imagined how others felt that went to war before me. With this firmly ingrained in my mind, I concluded I would strive to do my best and try the best I could to come back alive and in one piece. I even thought of a few of the most famous that served their country like Audie Murphy and Elvis. Both answered the call to serve. Both did their best. One even came out a hero. Not very long into the flight we were landing in Anchorage, Alaska for a two-hour layover, and then on to Osaka, Japan for another stop. As the plane entered airspace over Vietnam, everyone aboard instantly grew very quiet, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. We knew then that this is serious. Not a game or pretend, but a real thing. A real thing called war. I looked around at the guys and wondered who would make it back alive, and who wouldn't. Just idle thoughts. Thinking of getting shot down raced through my head among other things. I wanted to hurry, get safely on the ground and get a weapon fast. Landing at Tan Son Nut Air Base, we moved quickly through the processing stations and orientations, getting our new jungle uniforms, boots and weapons. In the first week or two in Vietnam, we went on a training exercise out in a rubber plantation. Just a few miles outside our base camp, called Bearcat, we arrived at our ambush location at the edge of night. We got into position, all of us lying in a line beside a known trail used by the Viet Cong. During the night, every other position slept for a short period. When it came time for me to wake and pull my guard duty, I noticed right away that a cobra snake had stood up in front of me with his head all puffed out. He was about three or four feet from my head. My M16 was right there, but if I moved it at all, it was all over for me. So I thought, what to do? What to do about this unbelievable situation I found myself in? I had heard that cobras would first spit into their victim's eyes, then strike at a lightning speed. In the corner of my eye, even though it was dark, I could still see a shadow of a man walking behind, as if checking on all of us. When he got to my location, I looked back at the snake and it had moved away. Phew, that was a very close call, and this was my first mission. Vietnam had all the killer snakes. Cobras were just one of them. I hate snakes. This was not going to be my only snake episode. We also spent a great deal of time in the classroom. In-country training, it was called. Getting used to the local customs as well as being aware at all times as to everything going on around. Anything out of the ordinary was suspect of being booby-trapped. The base camp was in a transition period at this time. It was in the process of being turned over to one of our allies, the Thais. Soon we were transported by way of a truck convoy down south to our new base camp, Dong Tam, located along the Mekong River and the South China Sea, about 60 miles south of Saigon. Dong Tam was huge, like a city, the 9th Division headquarters. I was assigned to the 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 6th Battalion, 31st Regiment, 9th Infantry Division. The 9th Infantry later received fame as it was the division portrayed in the movie Forrest Gump. And in 2005, my captain, George Malden, he retired a colonel, wrote a novel sort of based on some of our operations, the title being Charlie Hunter.
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Heart, Life, Music by Kenny Chesney The road stretches out in front of you, a ribbon of asphalt under a sky so big it swallows your worries. The windows are down, the music's up, and for a few precious miles it's just you and the rhythm of the highway. That feeling, it's about those moments when life and music collide, when a song can capture a memory, a feeling, a whole summer. It's about the heart that beats in time with the music, the stories whispered in the lyrics, the way a melody can lift you up and carry you home. It's not just about the songs, it's about life in the songs. It's about, well, you'll just have to listen.
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Well, I'll be leaving the boys behind pretty soon. They'll be going through their troubles when I have done with mine. It will probably come in a hurry when it comes, just as it came with Isaac." "'Isaac who?' "'Oh, you don't know then? I mean my brother Isaac. He died some seven years ago. He was raking the coals in the stove, and he looked just as well as he ever did in his youth. Then all of a sudden he staggered back to the sofa and fell dead. That's the way Isaac went.' "'You seem to be healthy and strong yet, Mr. Rowlands.' "'Yes, I know that, Mr. Reed. But coming events cast their shadows before them, and they've cast some of their shadows before me of late.' With no difficulty Alpheus Rowlands paused to catch his breath. His once hardy Yankee's father had helped make matters uncomfortable for the British during the War of 1812, and when the curtain fell on the troubles of that period, the family moved to Albany. Mr. Rowlands recalled to the Eagle Reporter with a good deal of verbal vividness the time when the steamer, Lady Richmond, made her first trip from New York to the state capital. The James Kent and the Chancellor Richmond, both out of John Englis' shipyard, belonged to that same fleet, and though they were stately and wonderful specimens of steamboat architecture in those days, they were ponderous structures, and they were making excellent time when they managed to land their passengers at Albany within twenty-four hours. The Lady Richmond drew so many feet of water that, as a rule, she could not get up to the landing-place, and Captain Rowlands, so he had been called for more than half his seventy-six years, explained to Sidney Reed, the Eagle's junior reporter, that there had been many a time when he assisted in the work of unloading her not that far from mid-stream. It was not unusual at all for her ladyship to take several days to make the trip, and the obstructions she was apt to encounter were so formidable that it was no surprise at all when a week elapsed between the hour of her departure and the hour of her arrival. Alvius Rowlands was just shy of seventeen when he made his first appearance in the City of Churches. At that tender age he was apprenticed as a ship's carpenter in the Navy Yard, and there he served his time, becoming a journeyman four years later. Oh, what a day that was, the old man said, drawing in a quick, excited breath. After four years, at sixty cents a day, two dollars a day seemed a pricely sum. Then, as soon as my time paid out, I went straight to New York, to Mr. Englis' yard. In those days the whole water-front on the west side of the river was lined with shipyards. The Meadows ran as far back as where Third Avenue now is, and there were a few houses above Fifth Street.
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My Beginnings Written by Bill Gates My grandmother gave me a TRS-80 for my thirteenth birthday. It wasn't just a computer, it was a portal. Suddenly, I could build worlds, solve puzzles, create anything. I spent hours in my room, the glow of the screen reflecting in my eyes, lost in lines of code. It wasn't just about the technology, it was about the power, the power to make something from nothing. That feeling, that's what started it all. It wasn't about money or fame, it was about the code, it was about the beginning.
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The Second Best Business Book Ever Written by Tom Mark. As I explored the world of sales and marketing, I noticed something intriguing. The most successful individuals weren't just selling products. They were selling ideas. They were thought leaders, unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom and push boundaries. But what if the real key to success lies not in being the best, but in embracing the second best? And that's when the question hit me. What does it truly mean to be second best? How can it lead to greatness?
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An excerpt from A Walk from Florida to New York by Edward Rodriguez Sometimes the best-laid plans fall apart. Then they become awesome. The walk for happiness awareness was not my original plan. The plan was to drive to Washington, D.C., spreading happiness by sharing the smile along the way.
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Unexpectedly, I received a call from Lena, my oldest daughter. She frantically asked if I was driving, and if so, I needed to pull over. I knew in my heart, before the words rang out, what she was about to say. As I pulled over and stopped, she said, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Dylan is dead. She further stated that the police were at Poppy's house, where Dylan lived, and that Poppy, their maternal grandfather, was all out of sorts. She said that I needed to get to Bay Minette as soon as possible. He was gone.
