Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gordon Greb, award-winning author, news broadcaster, and college professor, inspired students from Silicon Valley to Cambridge, England, and Beijing, China. They became successful editors, syndicated columnists, CNN anchors, White House and foreign correspondents. He and his wife Darlene live with their cat in Northern California. http: //dogatemymemoir.blogspot.com

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GOOGLE BRAIN

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface: The Meaning of Google........................................ixPART I: THE HUNGRY ID.................................................1Chapter 1 The Dog Ate What?...........................................3Chapter 2 Mind the Gap................................................9Chapter 3 Start Googling Now..........................................15Chapter 4 It's a Jungle Out There.....................................20Chapter 5 Goodbye, Old Man Depression.................................28Chapter 6 Pick Yourself Up............................................37Chapter 7 Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?...........................44Chapter 8 Bugs 'n' Things.............................................53Chapter 9 A Gentleman of the Press....................................61Chapter 10 The America I Saw in 1941..................................67Chapter 11 A Prisoner in a Chinese Cookie Factory.....................75Chapter 12 A Movie They Didn't Want Us to See.........................84PART II: THE PROUD EGO................................................89Chapter 13 Homecoming.................................................91Chapter 14 Where Do We Go From Here?..................................96Chapter 15 My Own Fight with McCarthyism..............................102Chapter 16 Hollywood Finds a Miracle..................................109Chapter 17 I Help Democrats Win.......................................118Chapter 18 Your Big Scoop Can Hurt Us.................................125Chapter 19 Eureka! I Find the First Broadcaster.......................134Chapter 20 War and Peace on Campus....................................140Chapter 21 American Imbecile in France................................149Chapter 22 Lost in China: Help, Marco Polo!...........................157PART III: THE SUPER EGO...............................................163Chapter 23 A Philosopher Learns to Laugh..............................165Chapter 24 I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy..................................172Chapter 25 How I Quit Smoking.........................................177Chapter 26 Welcome to the Twenty-First Century........................185Chapter 27 The Man Who Would Be King..................................189Chapter 28 Is Orwell's 1984 Here Already?.............................194Chapter 29 Lord, Give Me My Daily Paper...............................199Chapter 30 Walter Mitty, Cary Grant, and Me...........................205Chapter 31 Who Was the Real Shakespeare?..............................211Chapter 32 Are We There Yet?..........................................216Acknowledgements......................................................223References............................................................225

Chapter One

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

Harry Truman (1884-1972)

I'm expecting an invitation from the White House any day now. That's when President Barack Obama finally learns about something that vitally concerns him. But the problem is that he -like me-counts on the U.S. Post Office to deliver the mail through snow, rain, sleet, and hail. What worries me is simple: How will President Obama react when he finds out the postman doesn't always ring twice?

What I need to tell Obama is that two prized possessions have disappeared, one belonging to Mr. Obama himself and the other one to me. I call it-"The Case of the Missing Memoirs"-the president's and mine! If Winston Churchill were alive today he would describe it as "a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma," worthy of an investigation by Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or Raymond Chandler.

You may have bumped into this problem in the news but not paid much attention to it. You could have read about it in USA Today, seen it on C-SPAN, or heard it over National Public Radio. It's sort of a fever sweeping the country, affecting a huge number of people who have an absolute compulsion to be constantly scribbling, dictating, or clicking away. Each is trying to publish his or her memoir!

Among the 275, 232 writers who published new books last year, this group leads the pack-a long parade of greedy, media-generated fame-seekers, scrambling to be seen on television screens and the covers of People magazine. Look at this news item from the Sacramento Bee:

JUNEAU (AP)-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is ready to tell her side, agreeing to publish a memoir with HarperCollins. The book will come out in spring 2010-the year she is up for reelection.

Joining her are other personalities in the news-the endless line of anxious actors, fading entertainers, successful crooks, and failed investors-all wanting to be interviewed by Terry Gross, Brian Lamb, or Charlie Rose. Each has been hoping to become the next Madonna, Jon Stewart, or Paris Hilton. Even pop stars recently locked up in prison are being pursued by publishers eager for exclusive rights to print their stories.

Memoir writing is such a widespread and common affliction these days that it could easily be classified as some kind of disease. Its symptoms are quite easy to notice. You need to look for individuals who are overwhelmed by the desire to tell you, or anyone who will listen, the complete story of their lives. Whenever you bump into someone like this-a person highly infected with Ego Mania-the advice given by medical specialists to friends, neighbors, and relatives is to simply treat each wild-eyed memory chaser as you would a little child. Say simply, "Why don't you go to your room and write it down?"

According to recent studies, it's not uncommon to see all of these highly motivated writers developing a high fever on Sunday mornings. They hop out of bed, run madly in search of the New York Times, and flip open the pages quickly to find the "Best Seller" book lists to see who's made it. What worsens their condition is news of celebrities making big bucks. A perfect example occurred in the case of Bill Clinton, notorious non-stop talker, who was paid $10.1 million one year for simply flying around the world telling people his life experiences, which earned him $3 million when published as a memoir. Even without newspaper publicity, they still keep popping up as guests on network television and radio shows. There's little escape from tub-thumpers of this kind.

Before discussing this further, I have a confession to make. It's that I, too, am a victim of this Memoir Revolution. I caught this malady early in life and it's left me with the most awful of symptoms. Day after day I have had a persistent need to come clean, spill the whole works, and tell the world what normal people would only tell their psychiatrists. Trying to understand why this has happened has become part of the memoir itself. It's kept me working harder and harder, hammering away at my keyboard and madly looking for the answer.

I first noticed this condition after Miss Crystal, my seventh grade teacher, read a book to us in class-The Americanization of Edward Bok-the true story about a Dutch immigrant boy, who arrives in America at age seven with his family from Holland knowing no English and succeeds in adapting to his new country. It was such a well-written autobiography that it left me with lasting memories of how Bok at sixteen...