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The greatest immigrant success story of our time.
His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages.
He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.
By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe.
Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world.
Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry.
Within twenty years, he was the world's biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family.
Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow bodybuilders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world.
He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.
With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together.
Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice.
Here is Arnold, with total recall.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 1, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781451662450
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781451662450
- File size: 158896 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 28, 2013
Bodybuilder turned actor turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger narrates the opening and closing chapters of his memoir, but leaves the remainder of the recording in Stephen Lang’s capable hands. In giving voice to the Gover-nator’s first-person narrative, Lang works to evoke Schwarzenegger’s distinct accent and vocal mannerisms without falling into the trap of mimicry. Ultimately, he succeeds at this effort, particularly in portraying Schwarzenegger’s notorious bluster and machismo. Passages related to Schwarzenegger’s family tragedies—the loss of his brother in particular—and his courtship of and marriage to Maria Shriver prove especially poignant, as the tough guy comes to terms with tenderness. A Simon & Schuster hardcover. -
November 1, 2012
Immigrant muscleman, action-movie star and former California governor pumps himself up. In what reads more like a 650-page annotated resume than a dishy celebrity memoir, the life story of Schwarzenegger (The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, 1999, etc.) seems to have been penned by his soulless celluloid alter ego, the Terminator. Born in Austria the son of a card-carrying Nazi, the author began idolizing bodybuilders as a youngster. After a slapstick-filled stint as a tank driver in the Austrian army, Schwarzenegger dove headfirst into the world of bodybuilding, flexing and posing his way to the Mr. Universe title by the time he was 21. He then invaded America. From here, the author drags us through his version of the American dream: the endless weight training, real estate deals, political suckups and bad movies; the Humvee and private jet; his affair with Amazon man-hunter Brigitte Nielsen and rivalry with Sly Stallone; his love for Richard Nixon, his penchant for saying "outrageous" (read: stupid) things and his pathological zeal for self-promotion, and much more. Schwarzenegger documents his one-man Hollywood takeover in a blur of name-dropping and efficiently adds up the profits from each of his movies. By 2010, in addition to being a washed-up actor, the author was also the dubious mastermind behind the flashy culinary failure of Planet Hollywood and a lame-duck conservative ex-governor with record-low approval ratings. But just when it seemed like he was out of the spotlight, Schwarzenegger stirred up some saucy domestic drama, admitting to his wife that he impregnated the family housekeeper in 1996. Yet the iron-willed author admits to few imperfections and apologizes for little. A vapid, hulking doorstopper of a self-tribute.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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