Ten Things I Learned from Bill Porter

Book Description

Bill Porter worked for the Watkins Corp., selling household products door-to-door in one of Portland’s worst neighborhoods. Afflicted with cerebral palsy and burdened with continual pain, Porter was determined not to live on government disability and went on to become Watkins’s top-grossing salesman in Portland, the Northwest, and the U.S. This book was written by the woman who worked as Porter’s typist and driver and later became his friend and cospeaker. The “ten things” include Mother Knows Best, Persistence Pays Off, and Know Your Limits but Reach Beyond Them. This is an inspiring story with real-life lessons about tenacity in the face of daunting odds.

Customer Reviews:

what an inspiration.......2007-01-31

I laughed and I cried. I first heard of this book because it was on the New York Times Bestseller list. Also I watched clips of the movie "Door to Door" when my kids checked the video out from the library. I've become fascinated with Bill who has physical limitations and knew no limit. Despite physical challenges, he is such an inspiration to all of us who take daily tasks for granted, like putting on a tying our shoes, putting on a tie, or simply typing. Bill could only type one finger at a time. His assistant, Shelly Brady weaves her personal connection with Bill throughout. The book is a welcome addition to all middle school and high school libraries.

When the going get's tough...........2005-04-12

This is in my top three inspirational books. The real-life work ethic and example of Bill Porter (as told by his assistant Shelly Brady) is TRUE inspiration. The old saying "you can't keep a good man down" rings true here. I picked up this little book at Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport a few years back when my flight was delayed. I read it in the terminal and finished it on the plane. THIS BOOK IS WORTH MORE THAN ALL OF THE STEPHEN COVEYS, DALE CARNEGIES and JOEL BARKERS combined (these guys wrote "Snake Oil for the Soul"). Should you need inspiration FIND IT HERE! Bill Porter is the real deal...not a thinker, but a doer. Thank you Shelley for sharing your and Bill's story.

A Few Things I Learned from Bill Porter Too... .......2005-03-01

A few things I learned from Bill Porter are the power of persistence and that there really are no obstacles. Actually, Porter seems to take persistence to the extreme, and as for obstacles, it is not that they do not exist, but that for Porter, they have never been allowed to become the reasons for his failure. In fact, he refuses to let his cerebral palsy define who he is. Rather he insists on being defined for what he has contributed - the service he has given to others through his career as a salesman.

I had to reconsider that too. What is a salesman? A bothersome person who is intruding on your personal space to convince you to buy something that you didn't really want? Or can a salesman be a person who really does add value to your life by looking after your interests as a consumer and making sure you get the best deal. Well, I think everyone knows both kinds. And because of the former, most people have made the latter's ability to penetrate our defenses all the more challenging.

The last thing I ever wanted to be was a salesperson. But I am learning now how much this attitude has crippled me in my own profession, which happens to be education. The fact is that the ability to approach others and expand your personal network of friends and associates is critical to bringing your unique contributions to others, and even more importantly, partnering with others so that they may offer their contributions in return. When you consider it on a grander scale, where would the world be without those luminaries in history who had to intrude upon the mental space of others and sell revolutionary ideas to the people, especially when they did not want to hear? From God's Prophets to sages and scientists, it always took courage and persistence to come out of one's own secure personal space and carry a message to people who are usually not open at first to receiving it. I do not mean to stretch the purpose of the book too far, but this is what it meant to me, as an educator seeking to improve myself in the realm of networking so that I can bring my services to more people.

Shelly Brady taught me something too: the importance of friendship. While a cynical voice did nag me from time to time while reading this book, I reflected on how people with different strengths can form partnerships that allow both to go much farther than they ever could have gone alone. Without Brady, Porter would be no less courageous and inspiring, but he certainly did not have the vision Brady had to bring his story to so many other people through public speaking, books, and film. And what I think really comes through more so than any notion of self-interest is Brady's true love and concern for Porter, and her desire to share his profound impact on her life with others. Perhaps most importantly, her attitude toward Porter is characterized by awe rather than pity. Contrast that with how most of us would meet a Bill Porter and automatically assume our advantages while secretly allowing some fear or challenging circumstance to hold us back. Brady demonstrates here, that she admires Porter for never feeding his excuses for failure, and that she has drawn on his inspiration to overcome her own.

A telling example is how she contrasts her memories of childhood with his. His memories were not of growing up with cerebral palsy, but rather of sunbaths, his loving mother, and other simple joys. Too many of us have buried our memories of childhood joys under Freudian self-analytical blame of our parents or other happenstance. What we learn from Bill Porter is that it matters far less why these obstacles are there than how they can be surmounted.

I did not read this book in a single afternoon, although it certainly could be read that way. I took in its inspirational lessons in short spurts and experienced a small portion at a time. It is light reading, but worth the investment of enough time to allow "Ten Things I Learned from Bill Porter" to sink in.

Great person, flawed book.......2005-01-04

"Ten Things I Learned from Bill Porter" is ideal for someone who has seen the TV movie "Door to Door" or is otherwise ALREADY familiar with, and inspired by, the story of Bill Porter.

The book, unfortunately, is poorly written. Each chapter comes across as if it were conceived independently of the others. Biographical information about Bill Porter is repeated numerous times, and a fair amount of time is spent talking about the author's own life issues. Halfway through the book I found myself skimming paragraphs and whole pages, looking to get back to the thrust of the story about Bill Porter.

If you are looking for a biography of Bill Porter, this is not it. If you are very hungry for any additional information about Porter, this book may be worth your time.

A Complete Time Waster.......2004-12-25

To appreciate Bill Porter's life and success it is far better to see him portrayed in the movie 'Door To Door' featuring William H. Macy. Shelly Brady's book completely misses the mark. I found it to be a little too self-serving, syrupy, and terribly redundant at times. It read like the Bill Porter story starring Shelly Brady.

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KITCHENER: THE ROAD TO OMDURMAN
POLLOCK
Manufacturer: CONSTABLE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S6LJOW

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Kitchener: The Road to Omdurman (History & Politics)
John Pollock
Manufacturer: Constable
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0094798702

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Kitchener: The Road to Omdurman
John Pollock
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHE6X6

Book Description

As a global phenomenon, the scale and character of communism is only now coming into focus. The opening of formerly inaccessible archives and landmark books such as The Black Book of Communism have helped to establish empirically the extent and brutality of Communist totalitarianism. But what about Communist terror as it was personally experienced by the dissidents, the so-called obstructionists who stood in the way of the Communists’ efforts to create the new man of the socialist utopia? From the Gulag to the Killing Fields is another landmark volume—and the only one of its kind. Edited by renowned scholar of communism Paul Hollander, it gathers together more than forty dramatic personal memoirs of Communist violence and repression from political prisoners across the globe. From these compelling accounts several distinctive features of Communist political violence can be discerned. The most important, argues Hollander, is that communism was "violence with a higher purpose"—that is, it was devised and undertaken to create a historically superior social system that would not only abolish scarcity, exploitation, and inequality, but would also create a new and unique sense of community, social solidarity, and personal fulfillment. Nothing, of course, was allowed to stand in the way of this effort to radically and totally transform the human condition—least of all human beings. But, as Anne Applebaum notes in her foreword, human nature persisted: "Every person who entered the camps discovered qualities in themselves, both good and evil, that they hadn’t previously known they had. Ultimately, that selfdiscovery is the true subject of most camp memoirs, and the true subject of this book."

Customer Reviews:

A little dry, but still impressive.......2006-08-17

Maybe it is just me, or maybe something is lost in the translation for the exerpts reproduced in this volume, but the reading was a little rougher going than I expected. It is, however, wide-ranging, with voices from some of the lessor-examined communist regimes, and it definitely worth a look if this is your field of interest.

An excellent companion to The Black Book of Communism.......2006-05-06

But unlike the Black Book, which derives most of its information from recently accessible Soviet archives and other sources, this emotionally charged tome relies on the accounts of victims themselves, which makes it even more damning in my view. This book should convince many that Communism in practice is every bit as murderous as its rival totalitarian ideology Fascism, which is considered the epitome of political evil.

Several of the contributions are well known, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (USSR), Eugenia Ginzburg's "Journey into the Whirlwind" (USSR), Harry Wu's "Bitter Winds" (China) and Armando Valladares "Against All Hope" (Cuba). Some I myself have not heard of, such as Venko Markowski's "Goli Otok: Island of Death" (Yugoslavia) and Nika Stajka's "The Last Days of Freedom" (Albania). Others have been out of print for some time, such as Bao Ruo-wang's "Prisoner of Mao" (China). In all there are 45 different horror stories in this book that will keep you up at night.

The shocking details of humiliation and suffering in these personal accounts makes the book a more difficult read than the aforementioned Black Book, which for the most part is written in a fairly dry, scholarly tone as it recounts the numbers repressed and killed in various Communist dictatorships. Clearly numbers alone, and we're talking tens of millions, don't tell the full story. We learn firsthand that Khmer Rouge soldiers occasionally sliced open the bellies of pregnant women, in front of terrified spectators, and ripped the fetuses from them. In Castro's Cuba dissidents are subjected to horrific abuse in psychiatric prisons (similar abuse happened in the USSR, China and Romania). In Mengistu's Ethiopia during the "Red Terror," bullet-ridden bodies of men, women and even high school students were left lying in the streets or publicly displayed. In Enver Hoxha's Albania prisoners at the Nizhaveci camp were tormented and ultimately drowned in muddy swamps filled with leeches. In Nicaragua under the Sandinistas prisoners were subjected to brutal beatings during interrogation, mock executions, believable death threats against family members, food and water deprivation and extremely harsh conditions of confinement. And in North Korea's prison camps public executions by hanging and firing squad (often of inmates attempting to escape) are commonplace.

Clearly these selections from victims all over the world prove that repression and terror, with varying degrees of severity, were common practices in all Communist states.

The book opens with a thoughtful Foreword from Anne Applebaum and an absolutely brilliant 64-page introductory essay by Editor Paul Hollander. It rivals and perhaps surpasses Stephane Courtois's excellent (yet controversial in some circles) introduction to The Black Book of Communism. He hits the nail on the head again and again. He rightly tells us that while the mass murders of Hitler's National Socialists have stimulated a huge and continued outpouring of righteous indignation and hand wringing, the similar mass murders of Communist rulers such as Josef Stalin and Pol Pot have inspired little corresponding concern. Indeed, it seems that history's most prolific killer, Chinese Red Emperor Mao Tse-tung, has a better reputation amongst the cultural elites than does Ronald Reagan. And Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Castro's ruthless henchman who authorized hundreds of executions at La Cabana prison and sometimes participated in the killings himself, has become a pop culture phenomenon. T-shirts emblazoned with his "romantic" image are available in trendy shops at your local shopping mall. Could you imagine a t-shirt featuring General Pinochet's likeness being sold anywhere?

Hollander points out that left-wing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and revisionist historians such as J. Arch Getty (his 1985 book "Origins of the Great Purges" attempted to minimize the numbers killed in Stalin's Great Terror to mere "thousands" and portrayed Stalin not as an instigator of this horrendous bloodbath, but as a moderator in a bureaucratic turf war who was forced to authorize mass executions. The now accessible Soviet archives have proven him dead wrong on both counts. Applebaum rightly states in her Foreword that the archives "have established that the victims numbered in the millions, not the thousands.") coldly dismissed defectors and refugees accounts of Communist atrocities and deplored them being used in historical works. Recently, New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof was greatly skeptical of "uncorroborated reports" from survivors of North Korea's concentration camps, which are arguably some of the most inhumane in the world today. Yet it seems that memoirs and accounts by survivors and exiles of right-wing regimes are treated as gospel truth. Who, for instance, has questioned the truthfulness of Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela or Ariel Dorfman? Who would dare take someone to task for exaggerating the "horrors" of the McCarthy era besides perhaps a right-wing conservative pundit like Ann Coulter?

Even the most blatant apologists for Josef Stalin, such as Eric Hobsbawm, who boasted that the mass murder of 20 million people would have been totally justified had the great socialist utopia been realized, still enjoy an excellent moral and intellectual reputation in Western academic circles. One of the most disgusting apologists for this mass murderer, Grover Furr, who argues that good ole Uncle Joe was really an advocate of democracy, is a tenured English professor at Montclair State University. By contrast many of Hitler's apologists, like David Irving, Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf, are rotting inside prison cells in various social "democratic" European countries for the crime of "Holocaust denial." I could go on with these double standards forever it seems.

I'm sure some might be reluctant to purchase a book with contributions they've read elsewhere, especially Solzhenitsyn's popular "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." But as I mentioned earlier there are many here almost unheard of and others long out of print. The introduction alone is almost worth the price of the book! This is an absolute must have, especially for those who enjoyed The Black Book of Communism.

Into the whirlwind.(From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States)(Book review): An article from: New Criterion

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Into the whirlwind.(From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States)(Book review): An article from: New Criterion
Daniel J. Mahoney
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Thomson Gale on October 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2255 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Into the whirlwind.(From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States)(Book review)
Author: Daniel J. Mahoney
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Page: 71(5)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Utopia and its discontents.(works of Paul Hollander)(Critical essay): An article from: The National Interest

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Utopia and its discontents.(works of Paul Hollander)(Critical essay): An article from: The National Interest
Juliana Geran Pilon
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000VLVWYG
Release Date: 2007-08-31

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The National Interest, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2007. The length of the article is 2458 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Utopia and its discontents.(works of Paul Hollander)(Critical essay)
Author: Juliana Geran Pilon
Publication: The National Interest (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 88 Page: 80(5)

Article Type: Critical essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

This volume presents the results of a five-year study of wildlife-management policies in national parks. It synthesizes interviews with individuals inside and outside the National Park Service, provides a comprehensive review of published and unpublished literature, and draws on the collective experience of the authors with various units of the system over the past three decades. Among the topics examined are:

the structure and history of the National Park System and Service
wildlife "problems" in the parks
the role of science in formulating policies and in management
recommendations for changes in policy formulation, management, and scientific research procedures

Customer Reviews:

Essential study of wildlife policies in the national parks, but recommendations are weak.......2007-09-06

This report was originally commissioned by The Wildlife Society to make recommendations for managing wildlife in the national parks. TWS was disappointed with the result, and the authors decided to publish it on their own instead of trying to satisfy them.

It's an excellent review of the history of wildlife management in the national parks. Originally, wildlife were an afterthought because the parks were built around monumental scenery. After that, many people started to think of some species of wildlife as part of the scenery too, such as bears in Yellowstone or Yosemite. Eventually, wildlife became a featured part of some parks such as Isle Royale or the Everglades. In all parks, wildlife faces threats external to the park such as pollution or exotic species, as well as internal threats from tourism and other national park service goals.

The authors review these issues very well, and this book is one of the central texts for any review of wildlife in the parks. However, they shrink back from making any strong recommendations. As scientists, they tend to feel more comfortable with recommendations of the form, "If your goal is X, then your policy should be Y." They are less comfortable talking about what the policy goals should be, and the authors did not see this book as the place to make radical recommendations about decommissioning roads, removing tourists, or the like.

They also don't really confront the political problems involved in park policy. These include the interests of concessionaires and gateway communities, hunters in the region around each park, congressional pork, the political interests of the National Park Service, and the self-interest of scientists who work in parks (such as the authors!). While they mention these issues, they don't really confront them as either obstacles or opportunities to their preferred policy, in large part because their policy recommendations are pretty weak themselves.

Though this book is essential if you want to understand wildlife in parks, those limitations are an important weakness. It deserves 4.5 stars but I'll round up because I'm in a good mood.

Nature's Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite (Development of Western Resources)

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The Army and American "Nation Building"

Nature's Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite (Development of Western Resources)
Harvey Meyerson
Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0700611215

Book Description

Blessings on Uncle Sam's soldiers! They have done their job well, and every pine tree is waving its arms for joy.--John Muir

Muir's words and this book both celebrate a crucial but largely forgotten episode in our nation's history--the rescue of our national parks by soldiers with an environmental ethic generations ahead of its time. In Nature's Army, Harvey Meyerson chronicles this unexpected but fascinating tale and shows why its impact and relevance still resonate today.

Despite the worldwide renown and popularity of Yosemite National Park, few people know that its first stewards were drawn from the so-called Old Army. From 1890 until the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, these soldiers proved to be extremely competent and farsighted wilderness managers. Meyerson recaptures the forgotten history of these early environmentalists and shows how their work countered the army's Indian-fighting image and set significant standards for the future oversight of our national parks.

The army, Meyerson suggests, had actually been well prepared to assume this stewardship. During its first hundred years--and despite the interruptions of warfare--its soldiers had crisscrossed the American landscape, preparing maps, and writing detailed reports describing climate, weather, physical terrain, ecosystems, and the diverse flora and fauna populating the lands they explored and often protected during an era of wide open exploitation of natural resources. Such experience made the army better suited than any other federal agency to oversee the early national parks system.

So great was the army's ultimate environmental influence that the National Park Service embraced the army model as its own, right down to the uniforms still worn today. In fact, many of the first civilian rangers were drawn directly from the army, while some of the Sierra Club's most outspoken early members were cavalrymen serving in Yosemite.

Combining environmental, military, political, and cultural history, Meyerson's study is especially timely in light of Yosemite's enormous popularity (four million visitors annually) and recent controversies pitting conservation forces against dam builders and proponents of expanded public access.

This book is part of the Development of Western Resources series.

Customer Reviews:

The Army and American "Nation Building".......2002-03-19

NATURE'S ARMY is a tremendously engaging history of the 19th century United States Army. The book depicts the Army's main activity as "nation building," a concept somewhat discredited in the 2000 presidential election. The local example of "nation building" found its most lasting impact in the protection the Army gave to the newly-developing national park system. In particular, Harvey Meyerson focuses on California's Yosemite Park, set aside in 1890 as a national park. But, any visitor to Yellowstone in Wyoming can still see the Army's presence where the National Park Service maintains many of the original fort facilities at the Park's north entrance headquarters. Meyerson's excellent book should be read by anyone interested in western American history, military history in general, and the development of the American national park system. Highly recommended by this reviewer. Just a thoroughly engaging book.

A comparative analysis of federal wilderness management policies

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A comparative analysis of federal wilderness management policies
Jonathan M Lawton
Manufacturer: University of California
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Real Estate | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Natural History | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007311OE

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Parks as conservators of wild life
Paul B Riis
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Wildlife | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00088WNOA

Problems with incompatible uses on national wildlife refuges: Statement of James Duffus, III, Director, Natural Resources Management Issues, Resources, ... House of Representatives (Testimony)

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Problems with incompatible uses on national wildlife refuges: Statement of James Duffus, III, Director, Natural Resources Management Issues, Resources, ... House of Representatives (Testimony)
James Duffus
Manufacturer: U.S. General Accounting Office
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Land Use | Administrative Law | Law | Subjects | Books

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