You know how a great three-hour movie flies by but one that’s less than half as long can seem eternal? For me, watching “The Deer Hunter” or “Shawshank Redemption” is a riveting experience no matter how many times I’ve seen them – truthfully, I’ve lost count – and yet I’d sooner have Gronk perform emergency dental surgery on me than sit through some talking animal flick. Are you with me here? I picked Ask. (as in ask – period) by Ryan Levesque to review this month because it was recommended (duh) but also at fewer than 200 pages it seemed it’d be easy to get through during an otherwise busy season. Wrong. Turns out it’s about as breezy as reading the owner’s manual for a lawnmower.
To be clear, I’m not saying the book is badly written. On the contrary, Levesque, who’s Brown educated, has a rather folksy writing style, is warts-and-all humble, and shares revealing stories of his business failures that certainly enlighten the reader, all of which is revealed in the first half of the book. Part II is a how-to manual for building an online business for the almighty purpose of making money. And you know what? I don’t care. While there seems little doubt that the author is – at a very young age, in fact – the master of helping build multi-million dollar web-based businesses and brands in a couple dozen different industries, I derived zero enjoyment from trying to understand his complex, techie Ask Formula made up of “intentionally designed questions” that purportedly lead to “customizing a solution” that’s “completely automated.” It just feels mercenary and fake, lacking soul and therefore in my humble opinion undeserving of a full review. I can’t imagine it fits anyone’s theme or definition of Thanksgiving.
Far more meaningful a read is The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a very different sort of tale about another entrepreneurial Ivy Leaguer. Peace was an ingenious student from Essex County, NJ who earned a full ride to Yale, graduated with distinction with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and returned home a substantial enough pot grower and dealer to gangland so competitive it’ll get you murdered in cold blood right there among your crops. It’s more than twice the length of Ask. and yet I read it in half the time because I wanted so badly to understand what this young man was thinking. Written by Jeff Hobbs, Peace’s four-year college roommate, the book takes the reader deep inside the inner city where the novelist-turned-biographer uncovers fascinating details of his arrogant yet lovable subject, who would stop at nothing to support his mother (forever living precariously on the poverty line), father (controversially imprisoned for double murder), extended family, neighborhood children, lovers, and countless friends who lived locally, internationally, and everywhere in between.
Frankly, I also read the book because a lifetime ago I managed a territory that included Newark. I now imagine that perhaps I had a time or two driven by an adolescent Peace and his friends as they navigated those dangerous streets, scampering in full uniform to the private schools their parents could doubtless barely afford and yet surely would help set their children on paths to better lives. I sought answers and found few. Peace did what he wanted when he wanted and packed more education, adventure, and travel into his 30 years than most will in 90. He broke the law while ostensibly becoming a lawyer, not to protect himself and his criminal enterprise but rather as a reason to spend time with – and alas, in vain try to free – his dad. Reading Hobbs’ book is deeply moving and will bend your mind on topics spanning opportunity, wealth, privilege, race, class, culture, and prisons both real and imagined. And especially during this season when we celebrate having time with family and friends, it may also just break your heart.
So pick a book, either book, any book really. Ain’t much to rake anyway in the fall.