Mon Dec 07, 2009

On Today's Show: http://www.crntalk.com


AUTHOR "FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS" JAMES BRADLEY-- New Book:

"THE IMPERIAL CRUISE: A Secret History of Empire and War"

I was born in Wisconsin surrounded by a loving family of ten and loved swimming in cold lakes. When I was a boy I read an article by former president Harry Truman recommending that young people read historical biographies. He said it was easy to follow the storyline of a historical figure's life, and you'll learn the surrounding history on the journey. When I was thirteen years old I read an article by James Michener in Reader's Digest which I paraphrase: "When you're twenty-two and graduate from college, people will ask you, 'What do you want to do?' It's a good question, but you should answer it when you're thirty-five." Michener explained that his experiences wandering the globe as a young man later inspired his book on Afghanistan, Spain, Japan and other places. When I was nineteen years old, I lived and studied in Tokyo for one year. I later brought my Japanese friends home to Wisconsin. My father, John Bradley, had helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. John Bradley welcomed my friends to our home. I traveled around the world when I was twenty-one, from the U.S. to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, England and back to the United States. At twenty-three I graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For the next twenty years I worked in the corporate communications industry in the United States, Japan, England and South Africa. In my late thirties I took a year off to go around the world again. On this trip I made it to base camp on Mt. Everest and walked among lions in Africa. My father died when I was forty years old. My search to find out why he didn't speak about Iwo Jima led me to write Flags of Our Fathers and establish the James Bradley Peace Foundation. Flags of Our Fathers went on to be a bestseller and a movie, but few saw its potential at first. In fact, as this New York Times article documents, twenty-seven publishers turned my idea down. This difficult and humbling twenty-five month birthing process inspired my live presentation Doing the Impossible. In 2001 a WWII veteran of the Pacific revealed to me that the U.S. government had kept secret the beheading deaths of eight American airmen on the Japanese island of Chichi Jima, next door to Iwo Jima. After researching their deaths, I informed the eight families and the world of the unknown facts in my book second book Flyboys. (One flyboy got away. His name was George Herbert Walker Bush.) After writing two books about WWII in the Pacific, I began to wonder about the origins of America's involvement in that war. The inferno that followed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor had consumed countless lives, and believing there's usually smoke before a fire, I set off to search for the original spark. The result of that search is my third book, The Imperial Cruise. I am working on my fourth book, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and China. For the past ten years, the James Bradley Peace Foundation and Youth For Understanding have sent American students to live with families overseas. Perhaps in the future when we debate whether to fight it out or talk it out, one of these Americans might make a difference. Above my desk are the framed words of James Michener:"Just because you wrote a few books, the world is not going to change. You will find that you will go to sleep and awaken as the same son-of-a-bitch you were the day before."





Ellie Kay "SUPER MOM'S HOLIDAY TOY RESCUE PLAN "

Author of a dozen books, popular speaker, corporate educator and spokesperson, and mother of seven, Ellie Kay has walked her own financial talk and knows what it's like to be strapped for cash and struggling. Within two and a half years, she went from being a new wife and stepmom to two children with $40,000 in consumer debt to being completely debt free-all on one military income! Within 15 years and while adding five more children to the family, Ellie and her husband were able to pay cash for their cars, buy and furnish two five-bedroom homes (one after selling the other), take wonderful vacations, dress fashionably, build a nest egg for retirement, send the kids to college loan-free, and give away more than $100,000 to nonprofit organizations around the world. Ellie meets her audiences-mainstream Americans who earn between $40,000 and $100,000 annually-right where they are financially. She teaches them sound money habits that are do-able and will stretch their dollars for the lifestyle of their dreams. Her latest title, Living Rich for Less (Waterbook/Random House, January 2009), sets forth her 10/10/80T Rule, give away 10 percent of your income, save 10 percent, and spend the last 80 percent wisely, with hundreds of Cha-Ching Factor™ tips that show readers how to keep and put more than $30,000 in their pockets in just one year. Married for 22 years to Bob Kay-a former Stealth fighter pilot who is now a test pilot for a military contractor-and proud mom of a son at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Ellie especially understands the financial circumstances of military families. One of her bestselling paperback and audio books, Heroes at Home, has been distributed to military families around the world under a presidential initiative and was a Audiofile's Book of the Year finalist. A columnist for Military Money and Military Spouse, Ellie also regularly contributes financial know-how to Operation Homefront's website. In 1998 she received the Army's highest civilian medal, the Dr. Mary E. Walker Award, for outstanding dedication to improving the quality of life for soldiers and their families.





Barry McGuire "Eve Of Destruction"

On Pearl Harbor day we remember back 44 y7ears ago to the first real war protest song from a then 16 year old Barry Mcguire and hang on caause Barry will be with us in just a second with a brand new version of "Eve of Destruction" but first Grab your tamborine, love beads and tie dye shirts and sing along.' LOU ADLER:

I'd heard the first Dylan album with electrified instruments. This is strange, but it's really true: I gave Phil Sloan a pair of boots and a hat and a copy of the Dylan album, and a week later he came back with ten songs, including "Eve of Destruction." It was a natural feel for him - he's a great mimic. Anyway I was afraid of the song. I didn't know if we could get it played (on the radio). But the next night I went to Ciro's, where the Byrds were playing. It was the beginning of the freak period.... there was this subculture that no one in L.A. knew about, not even me, and it was growing. The Byrds were the leaders of the cult, and the place was jam-packed, spilling out on to the street. ln the middle of it was this guy in furs, with long hair, and dancing; I thought he looked like a leader of a movement. Terry Melcher told me that he was Barry McGuire, and that he'd sung with the New Christy Minstrels. A week later we cut the record and it sold six million. I didn't think it was a copy of anything. It was the first rock'n'roll protest song and Sloan laid it down in very simple terms, not like the folk people were doing. If you listen to the song today, it holds up all the way - it's the same problems. It's certainly an honest feeling, from a 16 year old. "Eve of Destruction" is a protest song written by P. F. Sloan in 1965. Several artists have recorded it, but the best-known recording was by Barry McGuire. This recording was made between July 12 and July 15, 1965 and released by Dunhill Records. The accompanying musicians were top-tier LA session men: P.F. Sloan on guitar, Hal Blaine (of Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew") on drums, and Larry Knechtel on bass. The vocal track was thrown on as a rough mix and was not intended to be the final version, but a copy of the recording "leaked" out to a DJ, who began playing it . The song was an instant hit and as a result the more polished vocal track that was at first envisioned was never recorded.