Quick Read

Call Me Ted
by Ted Turner, with Bill Burke

Whether he's excoriating Time Warner's bosses, mocking religious believers or drunkenly and publicly savoring his America's Cup win in the streets of Newport, R.I., Turner has never been a tight-lipped guy. How odd, then, to finish his autobiography wanting to hear more from him. While his remarkable achievements as media titan/sportsman/political gadfly/celebrity husband are ably recounted here for anybody who missed them the first time around, he gives up disappointingly little about how his divorces or his relationship with an alcoholic, suicidal father made him feel. A deeper look into the darker corners of this outsize life might have yielded more insight into what makes Ted run.

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
by Lawrence Lessig

Stanford law prof Lessig is a veteran critic of America's copyright laws. He argues that corporate-inspired attempts to tightly regulate the use of words, ideas and images has produced a profit-driven perversion of the noble objective of protecting the rights of creators. In this latest offering, his zeal to convince the public that current intellectual-property rules are ruining our culture burns brighter than ever. Lessig charges the IP authoritarians and the media companies that sign their checks with crimes against both youth and art, and he offers his own approach to balancing the conflict between copyright and creativity.

A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
by H.W. Brands

Historian Brands doesn't break much new ground in recounting how a man regarded by most who knew him as an overprivileged lightweight turned himself into one of the saviors of the American Dream. But this tale of how an unlikely leader confronted and ultimately helped to defeat a devastating financial crisis may inspire hope as the economic history of the Roosevelt era now threatens to repeat itself. In Brands's telling, FDR's story shows both the surprising resiliency of American society and the means by which undistinguished people find their own greatness in difficult times.

© 2008