Well-Read Life™

A renaissance man comes to Nicaragua

He wrote his first poem at 10 and started his first business at 11. After a stint in Africa with the Peace Corps, Michael Masterson combined his love of writing with his love of business and launched into publishing. With his partners, Michael built Baltimore-based Agora into a $300+ million publisher of books and newsletters related to health, wealth and good living.

Michael also writes bestselling business books published by Wiley, including Automatic Wealth for Grads and Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business, with co-author Mary Ellen Tribby.

Yet the Michael Masterson I’ve come to know over the last decade is not merely a successful businessman. He’s a renaissance man who admires and pursues learning of all types—fine art and literature, good cigars and exotic travel, mastering the Sunday New York Times crossword.

All this is merely prelude to the story I want to share about Michael—the story of the community he’s building in Nicaragua, and the two historical figures who guided his thinking.

Weekends on horseback

My in-laws raised their eyebrows when we asked them to watch the house over a long weekend while Lori and I popped down to Nicaragua. I don’t blame them. Nicaragua is still not a normal destination for Americans, many of whom, like my in-laws, recall something about Sandinistas and Daniel Ortega (who was re-elected in 2006). Nevertheless, Michael and his wife, Kathy, had invited us and some mutual friends down to Rancho Santana. Knowing Michael as I do, I couldn’t refuse.

Michael became interested in Nicaragua from reading one of his own publications, International Living magazine.  

International Living identified Nicaragua as a promising new destination well before other travel magazines did. It had much of the same benefits of its neighbor to the south, Costa Rica, while being less developed and less expensive. About 15 years ago, Mark followed his publication’s advice and went down to have a look.

It was raw country—even on the breathtakingly beautiful Pacific coastline. Michael had to go on horseback to survey the thousands of acres that were for sale. “It reminded me of what Florida must have looked like when Henry Flagler first saw it,” Michael told me.

A time for reflecting about reading and acting

We had a marvelous visit in Rancho Santana, which is a few hours by car southwest from the airport in Managua. Here are some photos of our trip.

Over the long weekend, I had a chance to tour the property with Michael by foot and on horseback, and to ask him about how he came to create Rancho Santana.

“It was amazing how completely undeveloped this was just 15 years ago. And in guiding me how to develop it, I do think of Henry Flagler,” he said. Then he told me why:

“What I love about Flagler is that after he made his millions in business with Rockefeller, he came to Florida and followed his dream. In Florida he spent his fortune and never made a nickel. He became a real estate developer, and few of them make money in the long run. But he was a truly great entrepreneur, a dreamer, and an idealist. He is a hero to me.

“Flagler had a vision for what Florida could become, and he went about creating that vision. He envisioned grand hotels connected by a railroad that would take people all the way down the state, including the engineering feat of the overseas railway to Key West. He created what we know and love about Saint Augustine, Palm Beach, Miami and Key West. If any one person can be said to have created Florida, it was Flagler.”

 Michael read several books about Flagler, including Les Standiford’s captivating Last Train to Paradise. He was also influenced by Andrew Carnegie and the dangers of charity.

‘Less damage than good’

“Do less damage than good,” said Michael. “That’s my motto because charity is hard. Generally speaking, charity damages those who receive it. It feels good to those who give it, but Carnegie figured out that alms giving just didn’t work well. He did some pure giving, and he also believed in income tax, but only to the wealthy.”

Michael says he was influenced by Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth and his approach to giving that depends on local investment.

Together with his partners, Michael has converted 3,000 acres in Nicaragua to an amenity-filled resort. But he didn’t stop there.

“We’ve built a health clinic for the many Nicaraguans working here. Now, my wife and I are developing a community center that will include an English school, a technical school, a library and a sports complex,” Michael said. “I don’t think of it as charity, but instead as providing educational and job opportunities in an area of the country where there is real need.”

Western author Louis L’Amour once said, “Read, read, read. Do, do, do.” Michael Masterson is one of the best exemplars of this advice I know.

Do you know others leading well-read lives of reading and action? I’d love to hear about them. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments.)

New Year’s Resolution: More Time to Read More Books

Dear Reader,

In case you’re resolving to get more books into your life this coming year, I list below nine ways to do so in 2009. Many are rather new, made possible by technology. Two are old, although powerful in ways most of us fail to truly understand.

No. 1: Read at least one book electronically

Buy or borrow an Amazon Kindle, a Sony eBook or similar device (there will be some new models out this year) and read at least one book this way in 2009. Most early adopters like the devices and many have reported that they read more books because of the ease of carrying a little magic book that can be almost any book. See if it liberates you, too.

No. 2: Make your personal library of favorite books virtual by uploading your titles into one of the social networking sites for booklovers

Perhaps even more important than the virtual book is the virtual library. This has changed my reading life, as I described last year with my use of Shelfari. Don’t underestimate how transformative this can be. It’s not just the reviewing of your books as you go, or the chance to rate them, but the tagging of them. These clouds help you discover patterns arising from groups of books in a way that was nearly impossible without this software. And I haven’t even touched on the social benefits. Vacation is a good time to upload your library, title by title, which is fun and revealing. (By the way, this is free.)

No. 3: Interact with readers online

So much of reading is sharing your thoughts with others. It’s never been easier to find people you want to talk to and books you want to talk about. Shelfari, Good Reads, Library Thing, Visual Bookshelf in Facebook—all are dedicated to communing with books, and hence, with ideas. There are other ways as well. Email an author on his or her website. Google a book title and you’ll find blog posts you can respond to.

No. 4: Make at least one an audiobook

Audiobooks are only a generation old yet are one of the gifts of our age and getting better every year. See what’s happening at Audiofile magazine, lovingly edited by Robin Whitten. Sign up with iTunes-enabled Audible, founded by the farseeing Donald Katz. Check out Recorded Books,  where studio director Claudia Howard works her casting magic with some of the world’s best narrators. I’ve been proselytizing for years now and can report success even with some quite stubborn visual readers. Here are some quick tips:

1.    Try great stories, mostly fiction or narrative nonfiction, like David McCullough.
2.     Listen when washing dishes, folding laundry, washing cars, anything mindless but handful.
3.    Don’t think driving is the only time; it’s not even necessarily the best time for audiobooks.
4.    If you don’t love your first listen, try two more before giving up. Even if you think audiobooks aren’t for you, even if you know you prefer reading with your eyes rather than your ears, please give audio a chance. Homer would approve, and Shakespeare, too.

No. 5: Relish the reverse boovie

Watch the movie first, and then read the book. Why do it backwards? Because it can be better this way. Ideal reverse boovie candidates are highly rated movies adapted from big novels. The more you like the movie, the more you’re likely to love the depth and dimension waiting for you in the original book. I know watching the movie first sounds strange, but don’t reject it just because it seems wrong. Lots of things seemed wrong in the beginning, like heavier-than-air flying machines.

No. 6: Visit a library and take prisoners

Especially if you haven’t been in a while, browse around and select five books that look interesting. Your public library is a special social institution, not at all pervasive in the world, and paid for by your United States of America tax dollars. Librarians have been building it expecting you to come. Seize the day, and here’s how:

Get yourself a library card, check out those five promising books, take them home with the expectation that you’ll taste all five…but finish only one. At home, begin each book and try to make it to page 50 or so. If you can put it down, do so. If you can’t put it down, don’t. Finishing one of the five is your benchmark for success. You will have not only enjoyed a brand new book in its entirety—a book you’ll likely be raving about to others—but you’ll have practiced two important lessons for those leading their well-read lives: using a library well and giving up on books you don’t love. Therein lies a path for finding those books that will change your life utterly.

No. 7: Visit a bookstore and take note of a changing landscape

We’ve passed the peak of the golden age of a bookstore on every corner. But many of those still with us have become the village wells of their non-virtual communities. Go enjoy them. Browse, chat with the booksellers, get the physical feel for books that’s still hard to achieve online. It’s as much about the experience as it is about the books.

No. 8: Read a book with a friend

Have one of your best friends choose a book for the two of you to read. Then get together in person and have something else to talk about, and grow your friendship yet more. Do the same with a special teenager you know—only this time, you choose. I’m recommending our Levenger Press book, A Boy at the Hogarth Press, a charming coming-of-age memoir from an earlier age.

No. 9: Read a book aloud to a loved one, or have them read to you

This is as old as human language—storytelling, that is. It’s at the very heart of what it means to be human, and it’s why so many older people cherish it. It’s not because they have trouble reading, which they may, but because they realize in their bones that hearing another human tell them a tale is one of the rooms of heaven.

Any one of these suggestions could be the key that unlocks the magic door for you to take your life to a higher plane—not only in 2009, but in every year following.

No. 10: Now it’s your turn

Let me know what sparks for you. Just click on the Comments link. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Has Reading Inspired You to Act?

First, my thanks to all of you who have responded to prior posts about reading and doing. I’m awed by the insights and experiences you share. You inspire me to keep searching for the many ways we can lead well-read lives. And that brings me to the following observations, followed by a question for you.

It was ten years ago, when I was just beginning to ask Levenger customers about their reading lives, that I asked an older woman whom I knew had read very widely whether there was one book that changed her life. She laughed good-naturedly, but said so many books had changed her life—mostly in small ways, sometimes in big ways—that picking just one didn’t make much sense to her.

As I’ve grown older and had the opportunity to expand my own reading, I find myself agreeing with that wise and experienced reader. As an example, the books we recently discussed here—Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, Three Cups of Tea, and Out of Poverty—have changed my life in a subtle but important way: I now have confidence that it is possible for all the world’s children to attend school and that illiteracy, like polio, can become mostly a problem of the past. Not that it’s easy, but if enough people set their minds to accomplish this, and go about it in the right ways, it really is possible.

I suppose this is the way most reading changes most people—subtly. We gain all-important perspective as we experience more of the world through the civilizing power of the word.

Sometimes, though, a book tips us into action. Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world did that for me.

A dose of Farmer’s good medicine

Last summer a friend told me she adored this book. That recommendation, combined with the fact that I have long wanted to read something by this prize-winning author, got me to read it.

The book is about a brilliant, intensely driven professor of medicine at Harvard who is obsessed with solving some of the worst diseases humans face, and doing so on a global scale. That life alone would be worthy of high praise, but in addition, Paul Farmer is something of a saint. Eschewing the comfortable life of an elite in the developed world, Farmer chose instead to build a clinic in the worst part of what is perhaps the most desperate country in the western hemisphere: Haiti. He spends most of his life there, personally tending to the sickest patients.

For more than a year, Tracy Kidder trailed Farmer not only to Haiti, but also to Peru and Russia on medical missions and conferences and many spots in between to really understand what makes the man tick. It’s a great story.

But how did it get me to do something?

First, I felt intimated by Farmer. A few years younger than me, this guy not only mastered the medical science of his chosen fields, rising to the zenith of established medicine, but also had personally cured hundreds of people with his own skilled mind, big heart, and capable hands.

Moreover, Farmer inspired others to work with him to create a new organization called Partners in Health that has already improved the way tuberculosis, among other diseases, is treated around the world—saving lives by the thousands.

Like Paul Polak, Paul Farmer wasn’t content to gain merely an academic understanding of the field to which he would devote his life; he wanted an up-front-and-personal understanding, imperiling his own life by disease and even violence, to gain this perspective.

While I was reading the book, my own life seemed pale in comparison. True, at Levenger, I’m proud of the products we make that can help people read, write and practice their professions. I often tell our staff that we’re not saving the world, but our customers are.

But lacking in my life was anything resembling the hands-on experience that Farmer has with his patients. So, after years of supporting the Palm Beach Literacy Coalition with modest donations, I decided to become a tutor myself.

I had intended to do something like this in coming years—when the kids were all out of the house and when Levenger didn’t demand so much of my attention. But I jumped the gun because of Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Reveling in what’s next

I’ve tutored only a few times so far, but already I can tell the need I have harbored to do this was deeper than I imagined. My 26-year-old Mexican student is a joy to help because he is so hard-working and intent on success. He works as a gardener, sending some of his earnings to his parents back home. After working all day in our Floridian sub-tropical conditions, he showers and cleans up before walking to a school a few miles from our offices here in Delray, where he practices his English Monday through Thursday, for two hours.

His roommates make fun of him for studying, but he badly wants to pass the GED and get ahead. The well-worn Spanish/English dictionary he carries in a pocket pays mute testimony to his diligence. He wants me to help him with his pronunciation, and has particular trouble pronouncing  the “x” as in next.

Last week, when Tropical Storm Fay closed all our schools, I felt empty for not being able to spend our Tuesday evening session together. I wanted to hear his progress and to pass on a suggestion I picked up from a speech pathologist about how to conquer that pesky “x” sound.

I’ll never be a Paul Farmer, but because of Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, I think I’ll be a better Steve Leveen.

Has a book caused you to do something new? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’: Calling Those Who Heard

Guest blog by Mim Harrison, Editor, Levenger Press

A note to our readers—

In order to have heard Prime Minister Winston Churchill deliver live over the radio what would become known to history as the “Finest Hour” speech, you would have had to be listening on 18 June 1940. A 12-year-old at the time would today be 80.

Most of those who were already waging war—or, in the United States, were soon to be fighting for the Allies—now have passed away. Before it is too late, we ask your help. If you know someone who heard the speech live, will you reach out to that person and ask what he or she remembers?

We would be most honored if you would share these stories from ear-witnesses, so we can help preserve and pass them on to others.

Our Levenger Press book, The Making of the Finest Hour, shows how Churchill crafted, edited and re-edited his famous speech, which you can hear on the CD that’s included. I’ve asked the editor of Levenger Press, Mim Harrison, to recount how the book came to life. She shares her recollections—including her own personal regret—in the story below.

—Steve

It was in the elegant dining room of London’s Royal Automobile Club, where one does not conduct business of any sort if one wishes to be invited back, that the idea of publishing a book about Sir Winston Churchill’s famous “Finest Hour” speech of 1940 first took hold. Levenger Press had just successfully published our second Churchill book in 2005, and we were eager to do more.

My host, a seasoned U.K. publisher of art books, felt Levenger could handily publish a book containing facsimile pages of Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech drafts, along with a CD of his BBC radio broadcast. Because Levenger sells directly to readers, the book would be spared the rough-and-tumble of shelf life in bookstores.

Had we been in L.A., we probably would have mapped out the idea on a napkin and made a few calls on our mobiles. Instead, we sipped on liqueurs and ordered dessert.

Then I legged it back double-time to my not-so-elegant hotel, and madly scribbled down the many ideas we’d talked about before they vanished into the damp March air.

The making of the book

The Making of the Finest Hour took some doing to make. Good fortune was on our side, though. The great leader’s namesake and grandson, Winston Churchill, gave us a green light on the project. Churchill Archives, the repository of Sir Winston’s papers, produced superb facsimiles of the speech drafts—the first draft, marked up and redlined and crossed through and rewritten by Sir Winston himself; and then the final draft, on the smaller pieces of paper and typed in the specific line sequence that Churchill insisted on.

Visuals were a challenge. We didn’t want to use a photo of Churchill—too predictable. What, then? The answer came in one of those aha moments: his typewriter, of course, the noiseless Underwood his secretary used to type the speech. For that we sought the help of the staff at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home. They gamely tracked down the typewriter and took shot after shot until we had what we wanted.

The Churchill Centre’s Richard Langworth drew upon his encyclopedic knowledge of Churchill for his introduction. He capped it with a remarkable statement by Churchill’s daughter Mary about the way her father wrote speeches.

As for the radio broadcast—you would think it would be easy to get hold of Churchill’s historic BBC broadcast of 18 June 1940. But because of various issues surrounding ownership, rights and recording dates, it was a bit like groping through an English garden maze and hoping you’d eventually find your way out.

Eventually we did. Just to be sure we had what we were looking for, though, I went to the BBC offices in New York and asked my sales rep, Nelda Gil, to play the recording for me.

The call to a generation

Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech was also one of Churchill’s finest hours. On 18 June 1940, most of Europe had succumbed to Hitler’s madness, leaving only Britain to fight. Churchill proved to be the free world’s secret weapon on a public stage, his genius for oratory being a galvanizing force first for the people of Britain, then for Americans as well.

But 18 June 1940 happened sixty-eight years ago—more than half a century. That time in our history is reaching its penumbra, passing daily out of living memory, as the number of people who heard Churchill’s speech live over the radio rapidly diminishes.

I am not of that generation—that Greatest Generation—but consider myself fortunate to be of parents who are. One of my uncles, career Army, fought in that war of Finest Hour. So did his daughter-in-law’s father, whom I met for the first time just as we were finishing The Making of the Finest Hour.

I showed him my working copy of the book, as I thought he might find it of interest. It was when I placed it in his hands that I realized it was, for him, more than a history book. It contained a part of his history.

Churchill had moved him to action as a soldier. Now Churchill moved him again, more than half a century later, almost to tears. The look of reverence on his face as he held that book is now a part of my history.

I made a mental note to send him a copy. But I waited too long, and like so many of his generation, he passed away.

From shared sacrifice to shared memory

Ken Burns once told an audience that the impetus for making his 2007 documentary of World War II, “The War,” was to honor that generation before it disappeared; approximately 1,000 WWII veterans were dying every week. He spoke with that remarkable passion of his of the “shared sacrifice” of that generation.

Each generation’s code is its own, perhaps never to be fully understood by another. But I would like to think that as long as Sir Winston’s “Finest Hour” is heard, some part of his generation, and my parents’ generation, will live in our shared memory.

I believe I caught a glimpse of this possibility on the bright December day I went to the BBC offices in New York, to meet Nelda and check the CD of the speech.

Nelda’s desk was one in a vast bullpen of desks, most inhabited by people of a still younger generation—twenty- and thirty-somethings who, by virtue of their job, were inured to hearing all kinds of recordings.

Nelda slid the CD into her machine, pressed play, the announcer said “Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister,” and then there it was: Churchill’s voice, rising from more than half a century ago above the radio static.

The entire room went quiet. They stopped, and they listened, and I think it’s safe to say that more than one of those young people heard something they had not heard before.

One generation passes and another comes of age. And somewhere in that changing of the guard is the voice of a finest hour.

Do you have a Finest Hour memory to share? Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments). We will endeavor to share and preserve all stories as part of the living history surrounding this speech that meant much to the course of history.

—Steve

Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods

As a follow-up to my post on Martin Luther King Jr. and the inspiration he drew from Thoreau, here's a link to the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

If you ever get a chance to walk around the lake, let me know if people still stack up stones on the place where his little cabin once stood. It's been twenty-some years since I walked by, but the fond memory lingers still.

 

Martin Luther King: Man of Reading, Man of Action

For a luminous example of how books fuel action, all we need do is look at the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his autobiography, King describes how reading Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” while in college was transforming.

Here, in this courageous New Englander’s refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery’s territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.

In 1955, King put that theory into practice. Mrs. Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. King helped transform that courageous first act into what would become the American Civil Rights Movement.

… what we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were simply saying to the white community, “We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.”

In addition to Thoreau, King read philosophy and history and was fascinated by the nonviolent demonstrations of Gandhi. King grew up studying Scripture, and saw Gandhi’s work as a bold manifestation of Christian teachings.

Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale.

King’s book-fueled life of action was observed the world over. His 1964 Noble Peace Prize afforded him even more power. Despite being assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39, his actions and ringing voice echo still.

King’s life was inspiration to Nelson Mandela, who at the time of King’s death would serve another 12 years in prison on Robben Island, before emerging to lead South Africa and uproot the evil tree of apartheid.

One of the blessings of Martin Luther King’s lifespan was that it coincided with the era of audio recording.

The audio version of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. contains original recordings of not only his famous “I Have a Dream,” speech, but also of lesser known speeches and sermons that posterity is most fortunate to have preserved.

Maja Thomas was the producer and director of the audio recordings. Over a five-year period, she collected the material from archives all over the United States. “Some existed only on the original cassettes that people brought to church, and contain short gaps from being turned over midway through the sermon,” recalled Maja last month.

Time Warner AudioBooks digitally remastered all the sermons and speeches. The resulting audio version of the autobiography won the Spoken Word Grammy in 2002.

It’s heartening to contemplate that long after all of us are gone, listeners yet unborn will be able to hear the power of Martin Luther King’s own voice urge them to face injustice anywhere they may have to.

“…either we go up together or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”