Weekend Reading, Listening, Watching

Becoming has already sold more than a million copies — and I’m guessing almost all those readers will shortly be recommending it to others, as I am to you.  If you listen at normal speed, you’ll have 19 intimate hours with this wonderful, amazing woman — just you and she.

Where she finds the patience, I don’t know.

If you listen at 1.25X or 1.5X speed, as I think you’ll prefer, you’ll have time also to read Thanks A Thousand, wherein A.J. Jacobs thanks his barista for his morning coffee — and then proceeds to personally thank everyone else around the world whose efforts were required to produce it.

It’s a lovely little book filled with charm, humor, and wisdom.  What better way to wrap up Thanksgiving weekend?

Come to think of it: buy five copies and use them instead of Hallmark cards the next five times you want to send a really nice thank-you note.

Have you not yet begun listening to the seven-part Bag Man podcast?  I’m telling you: even if you don’t know who Spiro Agnew was (he was Vice President of the United States) or how much time he spent in prison (he made a deal) or who took his place (Rockefeller), you will find this riveting.  And oh, so relevant to today.

In a related vein, watch “Betrayal: The Plot That Won The White House,” being rebroadcast tonight (Friday) at 9pm and midnight on MSNBC (Eastern Standard Time), and then again at 9pm Saturday and 10pm Sunday.

Turns out — as we sort of knew, but now know with far greater certainty (listen to the tapes!) — Nixon kept Johnson from ending the Vietnam War in order to win the Presidency . . . at a cost of, among much else, 20,000 American lives.  LBJ called it “treason,” but decided he had to keep it secret.  It ain’t secret now.