Customer Reviews

Anything Goes!: What I've Learned from Pundits, Politicians, and Presidents

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Kudos to Larry King (and Pat Piper) for their riveting account of the rich, famous and powerful during the final, tumultuous decade of the late (and unlamented) century. While "Anything Goes" provides fascinating insight into the lives of Washington's movers and shakers, it also gives a good glimpse of the talkmeister king himself, just a "poor kid from Brooklyn" embued with a rare gift of knowing whom to talk to, when, and what to ask. "Anything Goes" is a great chronicle of one of the most topsy-turvy periods in American history. It's also enormously entertaining.

Larry King is usually the background noise during dinner time in my (single) household so I pretend that I know him rather well. So when I started the book I expected the wise and experienced uncle to provide some wisdom and tell me about invaluable experiences. Well, it did not live up to that, especially in the first half of the book. But every now and again - moreso towards the end - I could hear him saying what he was writing. Much in the beginning just does not sound like him.

The books offers a great overview of what moved the media during the 90ies: so, here is your entertaining history lesson - not entirely comprehensive but certainly the basics for the media small talk. He does not show off, he is honest with himself and he displays the very down-to-earth side of himself. Maybe it just lacks more wicked, unheard-of experiences that I expected to get a better rating. You got to have this "wise uncle at 9 PM EST" with him to like the book.

This book reminded me of a collage term paper being done at the last minute when you increase the font size and margins to try and stretch the meager text to the length requirement. I have never been a big fan of his interview show, but I was hoping given the amount of time he has been at it, he would have some interesting "during the break" type of stories from his guests. It turned out that this was not the case.

I would like to say that I enjoyed this book or at least found parts interesting or well written, but that would not be honest. I had to keep reading given it was the only book I had on a 9 hour flight. How can someone that has interviewed so many interesting and influential people over the years have this little to say? Thank goodness for the professional writer he hired or who knows if we would have even had complete sentences to read. Overall the book was dull, no insights and barely anything interesting.

Well never having read a larry King book considering he wrote so many this book was great. It gave you inside edge on what larry king has seen, heard, and talked about in the years of his careers. It's was great reading about all the people he talk too. I would definely recommand this book to a friend.