#robert greenfield

[deadpresidents]

2023's Best Books

I meant to do this a few days ago so there was more time before the holidays, but here's a quick list of the best books that I read that were released in 2023. Obviously, I didn't read every book that came out this year, and I'm only listing the best books I read that were actually released in the 2023 calendar year.

In my opinion, the two very best books released in 2023 were An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford by Richard Norton Smith (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), and True West: Sam Shepard's Life, Work, and Times by Robert Greenfield (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).

(The rest of this list is in no particular order)

President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier C.W. Goodyear (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The World: A Family History of Humanity Simon Sebag Montefiore (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

France On Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain Julian Jackson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth Adam Goodheart (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World Mary Beard (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

City of Echoes: A New History of Rome, Its Popes, and Its People Jessica Wärnberg (BOOK | KINDLE)

We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World Alex Rowell (BOOK | KINDLE)

Edison's Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses Katie Spalding (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias Kevin Cook (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The Summer of 1876: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season That Defined the American West Chris Wimmer (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

King: A Life Jonathan Eig (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

LBJ's America: The Life and Legacies of Lyndon Baines Johnson Edited by Mark Atwood Lawrence and Mark K. Updegrove (BOOK | KINDLE)

Who Believes Is Not Alone: My Life Beside Benedict XVI Georg Gänswein with Saverio Gaeta (BOOK | KINDLE)

Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East Uri Kaufman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The Rough Rider and the Professor: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Friendship That Changed American History Laurence Jurdem (BOOK | KINDLE)

White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Broke All the Rules and Won the Heart of America Shelley Fraser Mickle (BOOK | KINDLE)

Romney: A Reckoning McKay Coppins (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics H.W. Brands (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Peter Frankopan (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

LeBron Jeff Benedict (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America Abraham Riesman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House Chris Whipple (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

[waugh-bao]

Showing some real emotion for the first time all night long, Mick says, "No. Don't wanna [go on]. Oh fucking why? They sold all the tickets here in three hours and then they just sat there."

To make him feel better, Stu says, "This was the most depressing part of the tour last time as well."

Walking over to the table, Charlie does a little soft-shoe routine that makes Mick smile and says, “Let's go out there and tread the boards then, Mick."

"Yeah," Mick says. “A tap dance. Oh, it's all right. But why do they just have to sit there? Let's go then.”

(From ‘Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye’ by Robert Greenfield)

[sesiondemadrugada]

Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005).

[deadpresidents]

I ask this every month or two but what have you been reading lately?

•True West: Sam Shepard's Life, Work, and Times (BOOK | AUDIO | KINDLE) by Robert Greenfield

•The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee (BOOK | AUDIO | KINDLE) by Paul R. Gregory

•Wahhabism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement (BOOK | KINDLE) by Cole M. Bunzel

•The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (BOOK | KINDLE) by Patrick Weil This is a really interesting new book about one of the more unique Presidential biographies ever written. William C. Bullitt was a longtime American diplomat and former supporter of Woodrow Wilson who blamed the failure of American ratification of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I on the worrisome personality changes he witnessed in President Wilson after Wilson suffered a stroke and serious health issues in the final years of his Presidency. Bullitt was close to Sigmund Freud and he teamed with Freud to write a psychological biography about Wilson several years after Wilson's death. The book they wrote (Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study) was very controversial and wasn't even published until nearly 30 years after Freud himself died. It's a really fascinating story and Weil's book -- as well as the original book by Bullitt and Freud -- reveal the potential dangers behind Presidential disability.

•The World: A Family History of Humanity (BOOK | AUDIO | KINDLE) by Simon Sebag Montefiore

•Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic (BOOK | AUDIO | KINDLE) by Simon Winchester I try to read every book that Simon Winchester writes. It seems like he's written books about basically every subject under the sun, and I can't think of a single one that I didn't find interesting.

•The Sergeant: The Incredible Life of Nicholas Said: Son of an African General, Slave of the Ottomans, Free Man Under the Tsars, Hero of the Union Army (BOOK | KINDLE) by Dean Calbreath The subtitle of this book alone makes it pretty clear that this is one hell of a story about a man who lived quite a life.

[waugh-bao]

“During the first show, the tempo on stage got a little tangled with Charlie hanging back a beat or two and Keith began shouting, ‘Faster, Charlie, faster. Fuck you. COME ON,’ stamping in time to show him what he meant. It’s something that’s happened before, and the two of them [always] go off stage with their arms around each other.”-Robert Greenfield, 1974

[waugh-bao]

Charlie and Bobby Being the Most Iconic Duo in Every Robert Greenfield Stones Book

-pg 24: “Drinking Scotch whiskey from a white paper cup in the dressing room after the encore is over, Bobby Keys shouts out, ‘Chawlie! Chawlie Watts! What do you mean, stirrin' up all these people like that?’

‘Naw, Bobby," Charlie says. "It was you. I saw you through the whole thing, just plottin' to make it happen.’”

-pg 28: “In a voice made far louder by the fact that he is now in England, Bobby Keys says, ‘Ah'm gonna burn down this goddamn hotel if ah don't find mah suitcase. Goddamn, ah'll throw Charlie Watts out a window.’”

-pg 62: “Charlie Watts is up behind the stewardess, shadowing her as she demonstrates the use of the lifejacket and the location of the emergency exists. ‘You cahn’t feel good today, can you?’ Charlie asks Bobby Keys. ‘Not after awl that drinkin you did las night.’ ‘Hell,’ Keys drawls, ‘it wasn’t the drankin. When ah got back to mah room ah found a gayng-bayng goin on. In mah bed. Chick looked lahk Joe Palooka.’ ‘Like who?’ Charlie inquires politely. ‘Lahk a bus mechanic,’ Keys clarifies, shaking his head sorrowfully at the memory of it all.”

-pg 64: “Backstage between shows, Bobby Keys puts on quite a performance of his own. Fixating on a girl who does some sort of clerical work for the theater, he decides to hit on her by saying, ‘Do you like rock 'n' roll? Do you watch TV? Do you like The Man from U.N.C.L.E? Well, that's Illya Kuryakin right over there. Turn around, Charlie, he's a little shy. Goddammit, Charlie, turn around!’

After doing so, Charlie disappears just as quickly as he can into the dressing room.”

[waugh-bao]

Pursuing a line of inquiry that seems to make sense only to him, the interviewer then asks, "Is the band tired?"

"Charlie!" Mick calls out. "Are you tired of all this then, the one-night stands and all?"

As Charlie is far too busy at the moment creeping around behind the cameras while asking everyone who is being interviewed to respond, Mick says, "Naw, we’re good.”

(From ‘Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye’ by Robert Greenfield)

[waugh-bao]

“And now a word about Charlie Watts. Unfailingly polite and always hysterically funny in his own unique deadpan manner, it had become apparent even to me by this point in the tour that in actual fact Charlie was the one around whom all the other Stones revolved. Without him, they would still have been the Rolling Stones but the fun factor would have most certainly been diminished a thousandfold.

As hip as they came and sharp as a razor, Charlie Watts was a living, breathing throwback to a time when jazz musicians were content to be just that and nothing more because the concept of rock stardom had yet to be introduced to the world…Charlie was the steady throbbing heart of the band onstage.

Aside from his musicianship, it was also Charlie's endless ability to put up with all the madness that came with being a Rolling Stone that enabled him to remain at the center of their very small and completely incestuous world. If you asked Charlie a question back then, he would always give you a straight answer. Although he looked like Buster Keaton and still dressed like the graphic designer he had become after attending Harrow Art School, there was something so artless and charming about Charlie's personality that everyone on the tour always wanted to be around him.

Far more than any of the other Stones, Charlie was grounded…What I can say for certain even now is that back then Charlie was not just a sweetheart of major proportions but also most definitely everyone's darling.”

(From ‘Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye’ by Robert Greenfield)