Little Known Facts about Well Known People by Dale Carnegie - Summary by Chady Elias

This summary was written by Chady Elias, second runner up at the reading competition and translated by myself.

In this book, author Dale Carnegie chose to explore the depths of the lives of renowned world figures looking for special personality traits that distinguished them and enabled them to leave their marks on history. Below are some of the most notable figures Dale discusses.

 

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all"

First, there is George Byron; the Romantic poet who had great impact on nineteenth century's literature. Insanely loved by dozens of women, he loved them back and left us thousands of poems and love letters.

As for Albert Einstein (born in 1879), the scientist who revolutionized science with his theory of relativity, we learn that he had difficulties at school and suffered a lot because of them. As an adult, he turned out to be as exotic as his own theory. For instance, he despised fame, wealth and luxury and avoided interviews with journalists. Over 1800 books have been published around his theory while he on the other hand only needed one sentence to convey it ... He often wore old wrinkled clothes which he didn’t even bother to iron. As for shaving, he always claimed doing it in the bath tub because using two kinds of soap, one for shaving the beard and one for bathing made life too complicated. He was a happy man who claimed his happiness was due to him not wanting or needing anything in life: “I don’t seek money, or titles or recognition and praise, what makes me happy is to play the violin, to work and to go on short excursions on my small boat”.  He even admitted that once at the train station, the ticketing officer pointed out to him that he had a serious problem with numbers and accounting.

Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution was born in 1870. He was seriously "depressed" in his youth and never participated in any sort of athletic competition. He wrote one of his manuscripts in prison using yogurt instead of ink to avoid being caught. To reveal the content, his followers had to soak the pages in hot water. In 1917, he became the ruler of Russia and confiscated all private properties redistributing them to farmers after chasing away their original owners. Russia knew famine at those times, to which Lenin’s initiative was to refuse adding sugar to his Tea because others were not able to have it. He had absolute power over Russia; ruling more or less alone, working 20 hours a day. He was a hard fighter who wouldn’t allow himself to be stopped at anything, learning even to write with his left hand when his right one got paralyzed.

Gandhi, the wise man from India, was born in 1869. He was poor yet he was stronger than any Millionaire on the earth. He grew up in a time full of hatred for the English. He then studied law in London and became a lawyer. The first time in court, he trembled and his knees shook so bad that he was forced to sit. He was not successful carrier wise when he was young, but he later knew a huge success and made a lot of profit. He was however incapable of enjoying his achievements because millions in his country were suffering from poverty. He consequently chose to vow his life to poverty and also adopted a little girl to raise as his own.
He did not ask for anything for himself. All he ever wanted was to die for others to live and he was indeed granted what he aspired for when he was assassinated in 1948.

William Shakespeare, England’s greatest poet and playwright was born in 1564. He got married at the age of eighteen to his mistress, eight years his senior. This was the tragedy of his life because he never loved her and he was forced to marry her only because they were caught in bed together. Shakespeare always warned readers not to marry older women. He lived most of his time in London, and only spent little time with his family visiting them once a year.  Shakespeare’s parents, his sister, his daughter and granddaughter were all illiterate. At the age of thirteen Shakespeare was forced to leave school and work with his father on the farm. He looked after the cattle, milked cows, made butter as well as tanned leather. He then guarded horses and carriages at the doors of theaters. Eventually, he was to act in a play and quickly become a leading master in play writing and show making.
He died very rich but did not leave anything in his will for his wife except their used old matrimonial bed. He was buried in front of the pulpit in the church because he had the money to make it possible! With Hamlet, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare has become immortal.

Joseph Stalin was born in 1879. His mother used to regularly take him with her to church, light a candle and pray that one day he becomes a priest who devotes his life for the service of religion. As planned, he studied theology but everything in his life took a turn the day he read Karl Marx's “Capital: Critique of Political Economy”. He joined the Social Democratic party in 1900. One may admire him or despise, but one thing is sure, one cannot ignore him. I personally find it difficult not to respect a man who devoted his whole life for one goal!He revolted against poverty  and was sentenced for eight years for standing up for this cause.

When he became the supreme ruler of Russia, he did not live in the Imperial Palace; home of the nine czars that ruled for sixty years before him. Instead, he chose to live near the palace, in a small apartment that was inhabited once by one of the czar's servants. He hated appearing in public and being in the presence of strangers. On the other hand, he was fond of clothing and style. No one is infallible, he used to repeat but "the virtue of a man is to have the courage to admit his own mistakes and fix them".



Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist and philosopher indulged himself in his youth with life pleasures. He later on dedicate himself to  the teachings of Jesus Christ. Early in his life, he faced too much difficulties to the point of despairing his tutors. After thirty years nonetheless, he wrote the greatest stories the world would ever known namely, "War and peace" and "Anna Karenina".
He was on a totally different pace with his wife when it came to luxury, fortune, glory and social success. He hated all the aforementioned trivialities of life as he preferred to refer to them, while she worshiped them. Not surprising for her to turn his life to hell after he gave up his intellectual properties right and authorized the Russian people to print his books free of charge. He tragically died at eighty two years old while trying to flee his wife. Indeed with no where to go to, he contracted pneumonia and passed away in a railway station in the presence of his daughter as well as photographers and journalists from around the world!



Egyptian queen Cleopatra inherited the throne of Egypt at seventeen years old. She ruled along her brother until she was deprived of her rights and was forced to flee to Syria. When Julius Caesar invaded Egypt, she decided to meet him and arranged for a fishing boat to transport her and her maid. She managed to get in his palace by hiding in a bag of goods. She instantly conquered his heart the moment she got out of the bag and sang and danced for him.  He then helped her overthrown her brother and monopolize the throne. She went back to Rome with him and publicly continued their affair. A son, "Caesarion" was born of their union. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, she moved back to Egypt where she met Marcus Antonius, the emperor with whom she would fall in love with and give birth to three children. Octavius' ​​troops defeated the armies of the Marc Anthony committed suicide when he was mistakenly informed that Cleopatra was captured and taken as a prisoner. Cleopatra followed his steps and killed herself after learning of her lover's death. What a sad end for a woman at the peak of her life, a woman who was madly loved by two of the greatest men in history...

La Nostalgie Heureuse by Amélie Nothomb - Summary

Key words: Autobiography, Travel, Japan, Nostalgia

Introduction: "La Nostaglie Heureuse" is an autobiographical story that traces the last trip of Amélie Nothomb to Japan. This country means a lot to this author who was born in Kobe in a family of a diplomat. Amélie was raised by a Japanese nanny "Nishio San" to whom she was and still is very attached. She was snatched from the country and separated from Nishio San at the age of three years, but she returned to it later for work when she was 20 years old and this is when she met the nicest boy in the world that she's ever known as she claims; a boy named "Rinri". He proposes to her, she accepts and then leaves back to Belgium with the intention to leave Rinri and he only discovers the whole thing after she has escaped. Later, in 2000 she publishes "Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam" in which she talks about the story of their engagement.

Tout ce que l'on aime devient une fiction.

Summary: Sixteen years have passed since Nohomb's last visit to Japan. In 2012 a team of France 5 proposes to her to go on a trip back to this country to film a documentary.  Amélie Nothomb accepts immediately. This documentary is the excuse she needed to return back to this loved country for she admits she was incapable to do so before « La pulsion de néant, … cherche à anéantir mes désirs les plus vrais. » « C’est la même pulsion de néant, j’en suis sûre, qui m’a empêchée de retourner au Japon pendant ces seize interminables années. » Once the trip is confirmed, she tries to contact Rinri to reconnect with him. Rinri is surprised but agrees to see her and we discover that he has become one of her most loyal readers. Upon her arrival to Kobe, she is sadly surprised by all the changes throughout the city. And to top it all, she discovers that her childhood home was destroyed by the earthquake. So for the rest of the trip she decides to look  only for the things that have survived and focus on them. Then comes the long awaited moment of her reunion with her nanny. It is sad for her to see how much Nishio San has aged, and to learn that her own children and grandchildren do not visit her. She tries to comfort her by telling her that she is her daughter too, and melts into tears while the two women embrace. A moment later, in the car, she discovers that the whole team shooting the documentary is in tears as well.

Amélie who thought that « Les retrouvailles sont des phénomènes si complexes qu’on ne devrait les effectuer qu’après un long apprentissage ou bien tout simplement les interdire. » now declares that « À présent je pense que les séparations devraient l’être également. »

During the rest of the documentary, Amélie visits her former kindergarten the "Yôchien", which seems to be the only place to have survived the earthquake. She finds a class picture that overwhelms her with happiness for it is the proof she needed to see to make sure that she did not just dream or imagine her childhood memories but that instead she literally lived in these places and didn't invent anything. Amélie heads then to what became the modern city Kyoto and also to Fukushima which was hit by a devastating earthquake a year ago. Tokyo is her last destination, and she feels so good in this city that her answer to the question asked by a reporter on the phone « Quand rentrez-vous en France ? » was « Jamais. » « Je suis une aspirine effervescente qui se dissout dans Tokyo.». She ends up meeting Rinri, revisiting the same places they had known together, talking with him of the past, present and eventually apologizing to him « Rinri pardonne-moi j’étais folle ». Deep inside however, she is now convinced that she does not regret leaving him because with him, she always had a feeling of embarrassment and discomfort and that she still does. For a moment, one is tempted to believe that this journey would end with a lot of nostalgia and melancholy but when the airplane flies over the Everest mountains Amélie is struck by the beauty she sees and ends up swearing that she'd never have sorrow or melancholy anymore « Jure-toi, Amélie, que tu n’auras plus jamais de chagrin ni même de mélancolie ; qui a frôlé l’Everest n’en a pas le droit. Le maximum que je t’autorise, désormais, c’est la nostalgie heureuse».

Nemesis by Philip Roth - Summary

This is a book that I really hated but the last two or three pages were really worth reading. If you're an avid reader, in your late twenties or early thirties and you have heard about it or were planning to read it, I'd highly advice you not to waste your time. Instead you might want to read the below summary for an overall look about the story and spare yourself the boredom I felt. I have no personal issue with the author or anything, this was the first book I read by him but I was disappointed beyond description.

Keywords: Polio, war, love, tragedy, guilt

 The book cover is one of the most appealing I have ever came across, so was the title but the latter wasn't really very linked to the story

Summary: It is 1944 and Newark is having one of the hottest summers. The country is facing both war and a polio epidemic. No one knows what causes Polio and there is no treatment for it yet. Bucky Cantor, a 23 year old lost his mother as a child and was raised by his grandparents. They made sure he gets a very good education and that he grows up to be a very well mannered man unlike his father was. They also teach him to be strong and count on himself. He grows fund of physical training realizing its importance in building one up and eventually becomes a physical education teacher. Despite his physical aptness, being a weight lifter and a javelin thrower, he still fails to join the army because of his poor site. He is appointed however as playground director in the Jewish Weequahic section of the city. Polio has not reached this section. But the disease will burst right after a group of Italians pay a visit to the playground where Bucky trains the kids. Some kids die, others get paralyzed. Panic takes over the families; few stop letting their kids outside the house, others ask for the playground to be shut and some directly blame Bucky for their kids’ illness or death. Bucky’s fiancé Marcia, worried about him, tries constantly to convince him to stay away from the kids in the city. She eventually succeeds at finding him a job with her at the summer camp in the Poconos. He first hesitates because he is the only one to take care of his grandmother but then upon her encouragement, he accepts and quits his job as playground director. Bucky is very affected by the blaming fingers people are pointing at him. He is also affected by the children’s deaths or paralysis not to forget his shame of not being able to join the war. He definitely needed to take a break from his city and this disease and joining his fiancé seemed as the perfect solution. He was also planning on asking her to marry him, after he got the approval of her parents. At the camp, Bucky now a changed man, questions the existence of God, blames him and this has negative repercussions on his relationship with this fiancé. What makes it even worse is the death of his best friend at war. But miraculously, Bucky steps out of his negativity after an encounter with a butterfly and he realizes how much satisfying his job is “there could be no more satisfying job for a man than giving a boy learning a sport. Along with the basic instruction, the security and confidence that all will be well and getting him over the fear of new experience” and decides to go back to his playground director duties. At the same time, some of the kids at the camp, including Marcia’s sister, contract Polio and so Bucky suspects he is the carrier of Polio that brought the disease with him to camp. It turns out to be true, but he survives Polio only to be left with a deformation in his spine and leg with partial disability. He also breaks up with Marcia “I owed her freedom”. In 1971, one of Bucky’s students at the playground bumps into him in the streets and finds out that Bucky never forgave himself for being a Polio carrier, and live all these years alone as means of punishment. To his student and many others however, Bucky the javelin thrower, have always and remained “Hercules”, “the strongest man on earth”, the “invincible”.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - Summary

Keywords: Dystopia, revolution, freedom, love, happiness

Summary: “WE” is a story about revolution mounted by people living in the “Onestate” which is the only state to exist in the future. This state was established after the 200-Years war between the City and the Country and is limited by a green wall. A benefactor is the absolute ruler of the Onestate and people in it are referred to as male and female numbers. Everything in this state has been calculated to ensure happiness of all numbers and therefore hunger and love, the rulers of the primitive world were both eliminated. All numbers have also been granted equal rights and duties and all their acts performed, including sexual ones are planned ahead and scheduled in a similar way for everybody. On a regular day for example, numbers work the same amount of time, each performing his/her own task, they sleep at the same hour and anyone can mate with a number of his/ her choice.  There’s no place for envy or jealousy in the Onestate. Moreover, no one is allowed to get late to work or lie or disobey. The state is strict about such behaviors and a severe punishment system is established for those who do not follow the law. It is through the diaries of the main character, a male number called D-503, the only mathematician in this state that we learn about the Onestate and all the events happening in it. We’ll also discover as the story continues that contradictory to all expectations, this predicted perfect life is not satisfying to all numbers because the absence of freedom which was purposefully abrogated for there is a negative relationship between freedom and happiness. Free people according to D-503 are considered the savage primitive people, the ancestors of the now civilized, evolved, wise numbers that reside in the Onestate.  Nevertheless, for a group of numbers in the Onestate the “Mephi”, freedom turns out to be more valuable than all the comfort one can offer. To this end, they have elaborated a plan to overthrow the system in this Onestate by not accepting to re-elect the benefactor on Election Day. Their leader; a female number named I-330 also gets D-503 to help them out without him really knowing. D-503 is an engineer that has built an Integral which is a sort of a machine of great importance for the well-being of the Onestate. D-503 has always been a perfect citizen but one encounter only with I-330 was enough to destabilize him. He starts getting dreams, he gets jealous and he is dragged unwillingly into helping I-330. He breaks many laws but is never caught because he is protected by the friends of I-330. He eventually realizes that the world does not end outside the green wall and that many people chose to cross over there for a free life. He also learns that freedom is contagious. Unfortunately, the coup d’état to overthrow the benefactor and liberate the numbers fails, and members of Mephi get arrested. D-503 accepts to be treated of his disease the “dreams” and “imagination” which he thinks caused all his awkward behavior and disobedience. His treatment is some kind of a lobotomy. I-330 on the other hand refuses and she is tortured in front of D-503 who is now indifferent to her. After all the punishment and torture, I-330 DOES NOT GIVE UP and her final message to D-503 and maybe to every one of us is that “The number of revolutions is infinite”, as long as there are numbers, there will be revolutions.

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green - Summary

Keywords: Cancer fighting, love of literature, love, last wish, traveling, death, life

Summary: The story of this book is told by Hazel, a 16 years old girl who has been fighting thyroid cancer since she was 13. Hazel’s chances of survival are slight because her lungs have started to shut down. The doctors however, are trying to save her life by giving her a new trial drug which has shown promising effects against tumor metastasis. In the meantime, Hazel has to use a permanent oxygen support, i.e. an oxygen tank cart to perform the simplest task in life: breathing.

Life is hard on Hazel to say the least but this will all change when she meets 17 years old Augustus Waters, an osteosarcoma survivor who has lost his leg in the fight. Hazel and Augustus both like reading, although they have completely opposite tastes in books. Cancer and reading will bring them together and they will fall in love with one another. "As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." Among the reads they exchange, there is “An imperial affliction”, a book which does not have an ending, but rather just stops in the middle of a sentence. Being a sort of a diary written by a girl with blood cancer who is trying to find out whether the man who wants to marry her mother is a crook or not, this book is Hazel’s favorite as she finds “It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence”. Augustus will eventually arrange a trip to Prague for him and Hazel to meet the recluse author of “An imperial affliction” who promised to tell them the ending; or what happens to the rest of the characters after the protagonist dies. The encounter turns out to be a fiasco but the trip itself is the miracle that both Hazel and Augustus never expected to happen.

At the end, one is shocked to learn that Augusts’ condition was far worse than Hazel’s and that his last act before dying was to fulfill Hazel’s wish. In return she also gets to make his wish come true, by reading him his eulogy before he dies so he gets to see his own funeral in a way. Needless to say, the risk of tears expected while reading this book and this passage in particular is significantly high.

 “The fault in our stars” strength lies in the fact that Hazel, Augustus and other characters expose to us how society sees cancer patients and how they see themselves. They are not always courageous and tough. “People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake: In that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.” They are not always nice; some are mean or get mean because they have to deal with cancer or because of their cancer type. “Asshole Tumor, because it turns you into a monster”. Cancer is sometimes harder on the parents than the patients. For instance, the whole lifestyle of a family changes to cope with cancer, and the strongest member of the family, the father that is, might not necessarily be the strongest at facing the fact that his own child has cancer. But we also learn that family suffering is what drives cancer patients to fight and act strong as Hazel puts it when she’s talking about her mother “Her primary reason for living and my primary reason for living were awfully entangled.”  Finally, it was very hard for me to know that the worst fear of cancer patients is to fall in love and to let people get attached to them because they feel like grenades that are going to explode sooner or later and that when they do there will be no glory in that and no single painting in museums to remember them like warriors at battles and many other deaths are remembered. “There is no glory in sickness … There is no honor in dying of.”

Carnival by Rawi Hage - Summary - The book to read people

Keywords: Book lovers, circus, taxi drivers, friendship, life

 

Summary: Fly was born in a circus. His mother was a trapeze artist and his father who came from the east, owned a camel and a flying carpet. When Fly’s father became a believer, he pinned his carpet to the ground and left him and his mother and never came back. To cope with her abandoning, Fly’s mother started having lovers whom Fly was aware of, and when it didn't help much, she put an end to her life. Fly was next raised by the bearded lady and he wandered with the circus through Europe before settling in the Carnival city where everyone is disguised: those who wear animal masks and those who don’t. Fly then becomes a taxi driver and the reader gets invited into his world which consists of his apartment, his cab and the restaurant where he often takes his meals. According to Fly, there are two types of taxi drivers depending on the way they pick up customers. He calls these two types: the Spiders and the Flies. Fly does not wait for customers at taxi stands like the Spiders; instead, true to his Fly nature, he prefers to wander looking for the wavers and the whistlers.

His apartment is more or less a library unique in its style. It is full of books that contain the world. Fly subjectively classifies his books in a very peculiar way that defies every methodology of documentation ever conceived. “I sit on books, sleep on them, breathe them. I arrange them by character, the colour of their skies, and the circumference of their authors’ heads” he lets us know. We also learn that Fly has a crush on his neighbor, the religious Zainab with whom he constantly argues about religion. When he's not picking up on Zainab or reading, Fly spend his time masturbating, a habit that has started when he first saw his mother and her collection of “bare assed lovers” making out.

In his cab, Fly meets all sorts of people: Drug dealers, thugs, lovers, sex addicts, prostitutes, priests, broken couples, abused women etc. Every day is a new adventure in the cab, or his boat as he prefers to call it.

In the restaurant, we get to meet Fly’s numerous comrades and learn about their personal as well as work related stories.

An important person in Fly’s life is Otto, his revolutionary friend with whom in the past, he shared an apartment and a now passed away girlfriend. Otto lives on the streets, and he is not very sane, mentally speaking. He gets Fly to help him in a mission targeted against a list of important people in the city that he has identified and judged as worthy of punishment. The awkward sentence he chose to impose on the people of his list is to force them to read selected passages while he, Otto, is disguised as a clown and pointing a gun to their heads. Apparently you should “Never underestimate a clown with a book”. Unexpectedly, Tamer, a kid practically raised by Fly and Otto ends up involved in the killing of some of the people from Otto’s list which makes Otto put an end to his life and drives Fly to fly away from the Carnival city.

 

You can also check my video on youtube so that you know how much I liked "Carnival" and what I thought about the writing, the theme and everything else.