Volume 42, Number 13 · August 10, 1995
The Teachings of Speaker Gingrich
By Joan Didion
1945
by Newt Gingrich, by William R. Forstchen
Baen Books/distributed by Simon and Schuster, 382 pp., $24.00
To Renew America
by Newt Gingrich
Harper Audio, 260 pp., $17.00 two cassettes (abridged, approximately three hours)
Among the personalities and books and events that have 'influenced' or 'changed' or 'left an indelible impression on' the thinking of the Hon. Newton Leroy Gingrich (R-Ga.), the current Speaker of the House of Representatives and the author of 1945 and To Renew America, are, by his own accounts, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Isaac Asimov, Alexis de Tocqueville, Tom Clancy, Allen Drury's Advise and Consent, Robert Walpole, William Gladstone, Gordon Wood, Peter Drucker, Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, the 'Two Cultures' lectures of C.P. Snow (the lesson here for the Speaker was that 'if you're capable of being glib and verbal, the odds are you have no idea what you're talking about but it sounds good, whereas if you know a great deal of what you're saying the odds are you can't get on a talk show because nobody can understand you'), Adam Smith, Zen and the Art of Archery, 'the great leader of Coca-Cola for many years, Woodruff,' an Omaha entrepreneur named Herman Cain ('who's the head of Godfather Pizza, he's an African-American who was born in Atlanta and his father was Woodruff's chauffeur'), Ray Kroc's Grinding It Out, and Johan Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Review, 5563 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |