Sunday Morning Coming Down: Book, Video Recommendations

It's probably a bit early to listen to this, but here it is --

Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash

This is not random. Well, maybe it is. Whatever. In this weekend's edition, The Wall Street Journal has several good book reviews, including The Man In Black And White.

In the pantheon of American cool, it's tough to top Johnny Cash. He's right up there with Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and Jesse James. Cash has had die-hard fans of every stripe, from the Rev. Billy Graham, who for decades featured him on his evangelical crusades, to director Quentin Tarantino, who champions Cash songs like "Folsom Prison Blues" as "poems to the criminal mentality." Ten years after his death at 71, he is still a hero for millions allergic to any other country music, and his legacy as a rebel has inspired countless regrettable tattoos.

For his followers, Cash was more prophet than entertainer, offering a message of redemption as deep and alluring as his signature voice, his timeless music and his tormented life. "People believed in Johnny Cash," said his longtime bass player Marshall Grant. "They didn't just like his music. They believed in him."

As regular readers know, I do not watch network/cable television (except NASCAR and some of the recent World Series). But I do love DVDs. I'm in my Johnny Cash phase. Probably one of the videos I enjoy best that touches on Johnny Cash's beginnings is Good Rockin' Tonight -- The Legacy of Sun Records. I would be surprised if this is not in the Smithsonian.

But even better, there's a preview of what sounds like a great book that will be published this Tuesday, November 5, 2013, The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters.

It is such a great article, I might re-type the entire article and place it in the blog; I won't cut and paste the article, but I will retype it in its entirety if the spirit moves me. It's that good. Talking about the housing bust and the financial system meltdown, the article interestingly starts out this way:

What's most surprising about both events is how few experts saw them coming—and that a group of unlikely outsiders somehow did. Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke failed to foresee the financial meltdown. Top banking executives were stunned, and leading investors such as Bill Gross, Jim Chanos and George Soros didn't fully anticipate the downturn. 

The big winners were people like John Paulson, an expert in mergers who only began researching housing in 2006 and scored a record $20 billion for his hedge fund. Jeffrey Greene, a Los Angeles playboy who partied with Paris Hilton, made $500 million predicting housing troubles. 

What does this have to do with fracking? See more at the link. I'm definitely buying the book.