Books: Monsters and Hiltons
Jan. 1st, 2008 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
woodwardiocomThe last books I finished before midnight are . . .
To my occasional surprise, I really enjoy autobiographies set in the early 20th century, and this one turned out not to be an exception. Hilton was born in an adobe-and-clapboard home in a tiny town in New Mexico, helped run the family store, fought in WW1, and then traveled to Texas in the oil boom days with $5,000 in his pocket. His uncanny ability to talk people into investing, and a knack for hotel management, resulted in him buying and fixing up hotel after hotel . . . then building hotel after hotel . . . then buying the Waldorf . . . and he managed to stay an honest businessman through it all. The end of the book gets a little shrilly anti-Communist, which looks a little dumb from the perspective of 2008, but [shrug] it was the 50s, and the government needed us to be scared of something. Next time you're in a Hilton, recommended.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inthatoneway, this is a biography of the gentleman behind the special effects in the early Godzilla movies, the early Ultraman TV shows, and a bajillion other movies besides. A bit which impressed me was how his recreation of the Pearl Harbor attack was taken for actual footage by the U.S. after the war . . . A fun book, full of lovely pictures of this dapper man in a suit and hat standing waist-deep in miniature buildings while giving direction to King Kong and other beasties. A bit brief, and not exceptionally deep, but still recommended to people with an interest in the topic.
Be My Guest by Conrad Hilton
This slim paperback can be found in any Hilton hotel drawer around the world, and is the autobiography of Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotels chain, as written in the late 1950s. (Great-grandfather to Paris, in case you were wondering, and boy has that apple fallen far from the tree.)To my occasional surprise, I really enjoy autobiographies set in the early 20th century, and this one turned out not to be an exception. Hilton was born in an adobe-and-clapboard home in a tiny town in New Mexico, helped run the family store, fought in WW1, and then traveled to Texas in the oil boom days with $5,000 in his pocket. His uncanny ability to talk people into investing, and a knack for hotel management, resulted in him buying and fixing up hotel after hotel . . . then building hotel after hotel . . . then buying the Waldorf . . . and he managed to stay an honest businessman through it all. The end of the book gets a little shrilly anti-Communist, which looks a little dumb from the perspective of 2008, but [shrug] it was the 50s, and the government needed us to be scared of something. Next time you're in a Hilton, recommended.
Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters
A gift frominthatoneway, this is a biography of the gentleman behind the special effects in the early Godzilla movies, the early Ultraman TV shows, and a bajillion other movies besides. A bit which impressed me was how his recreation of the Pearl Harbor attack was taken for actual footage by the U.S. after the war . . . A fun book, full of lovely pictures of this dapper man in a suit and hat standing waist-deep in miniature buildings while giving direction to King Kong and other beasties. A bit brief, and not exceptionally deep, but still recommended to people with an interest in the topic.
