The Early Career of Martha Stewart

In August 1968 Martha Stewart got her stockbroker’s license and went to work for the firm of Perlberg, Monness, Williams and Sidel. She was 27. She appears five times in A Book of Ages. She was already very self-possessed as a high school student in Nutley, New Jersey in 1959. She went into modeling, then stockbroking, then started a catering business, and you sense she already knew where the business was going. Thirty-four years later she would be on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, a post she was forced to resign because of the insider trading scandal which landed her in prison. But she hasn't disappeared. There is something unbreakable, if not exactly scuff-proof about the homemaking maven. Smiling, cunning, slightly icy, a perfectionist but also a touch self-ironic, which is what makes her so watchable.

Cleopatra and her asp

Cleopatra and Marc Antony killed themselves on this day in 30 BC. She used an asp, which is a kind of snake. The date on the death certificate is said to be August 30, but that is doubtful because the month’s namesake Caesar Augustus hadn’t renamed it yet. Cleopatra was 39; Antony was 53. Cleopatra appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Hello I Must Be Going

Animal Crackers opened in New York on August 29, 1930. In the film Groucho Marx sang “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”, "Hello I Must Be Going" and also bragged about shooting an elephant in his pajamas. He was 39. Groucho Marx appears 11 times in A Book of Ages; Karl only appears twice.

Alice at Chez Panisse

On August 28, 1971, Alice Waters opened a restaurant in Berkeley, California. She named it Chez Panisse. The set menu that first night was pâté en croûte followed by duck with olives, a salad and an almond tart; $3.95. The kitchen wasn’t finished yet and they ran out of silverware, but Berkeley was charmed anyway. Waters was 27. She appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Charlton Heston Unarmed

In August 28, 1963, Charlton Heston took part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s March On Washington. In the photographs it appears the 38 year-old actor was unarmed.

Elvis and the Beatles

On August 27, 1965 Elvis Presley received a visit from the Beatles at Graceland. Because he couldn’t tell them apart and didn’t know their names he addressed each of them individually as “Beatle.”

At age 30, Elvis was the elder statesman of Rock 'n' Roll, the King, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the Maharishi of Pop. One pictures the youngsters kissing the hem of his garment and only half ironically. Elvis appears nine times in A Book of Ages, John and Paul several times each.

Ted Kennedy

I nearly titled this post "The Last Kennedy" because Ted was the last of the legendary brothers. Some called him the least of them, but his legacy is far greater than JFK and RFK's. A less glamorous, less tragic figure. Unlike them he isn't forever young. Ted's record in the Senate improved the lives of ordinary Americans enormously, in less noticeable ways, expanding safety nets and protecting rights. Bobby and Jack led more conspicuously by being activist and photogenic, but Ted did the long work writing the bills and building the alliances to get them enacted. Ted Kennedy appears only once in A Book of Ages, at age 37. That tragic early morning on Chappaquiddick defined his life in the minds of many people, but it didn't end his work. That is a different kind of heroism. The kind of thing novelists write about.

Freud

The last entry in Freud's diary, for August 25, 1939, reads: “War Panic.” He died a month later, in London, a few weeks after war was declared with Germany. Freud appears 13 times in A Book of Ages, seeing his mother naked, getting a couch, meeting Jung, advising Mahler about his mother fixation, collecting knick-knacks (which may or may not have been a substitution for something else,) quitting smoking.

On the cover of Rolling Stone

Bruce Springsteen appeared on the August 24, 1978 cover of Rolling Stone magazine. He was 28, and had finally made it. Pop stars are routinely baptized as such on the iconic cover of the magazine. Britney Spears made her first appearance at the experienced age of 17. In 1971, 11 year-old Michael Jackson appeared under a provocative question about how late his bedtime was. As rock legends die of various excesses, the Rolling Stone cover treatment has become a valediction and validation. John Lennon appeared on the first cover in 1967 when he was 26, and posed for the famous Annie Liebovitz cover on the day he died at age 40.

Theft of the Mona Lisa

On this day in 1911 curators at the Louvre discovered that the Mona Lisa had been stolen. Among the suspects were the 32 year-old poet Guillaume Apollinaire and a 29 year-old semi-famous painter named Pablo Picasso. The tale appears on page 109 in A Book of Ages. Picasso appears ten times in the book, Apollinaire once. The painting appears twice, being stolen and being painted by da Vinci when he was 51.

Jesse James

On August 21, 1863, Jesse James rode with Quantrill’s Raiders in their attack on the abolitionist community of Lawrence, Kansas. 150 men, women, and children were murdered. James was 15.

A Very Famous Childhood

On August 21, 1921, Christopher Robin Milne got a stuffed bear for his first birthday. He would receive a stuffed donkey for Christmas, and he already had a small stuffed pig, a gift from a neighbor. His father wrote humorous stories about fashionable Londoners, and successful plays that ran in the West End. His mother was attractive and very chic. They lived in Chelsea. Christopher had a perfect childhood in many ways. In a few years, through no fault of his own, he would be the most famous child in the English-speaking world. None of this sounds like a recipe for unhappiness, but he hated fame. He would spend the rest of his life hiding from it. Christopher Robin appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Saul Bellow and Leon Trotsky

In August, 1944, Saul Bellow was in Mexico City. On the morning of the 20th he had an appointment with Leon Trotsky, but the communist leader was murdered before the two could meet. Bellow was 25 and hadn't become a conservative libertarian yet.

An Unknown from Illinois

On August 20, 1858, a beardless 49 year-old former one-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln met Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas in the first of seven three-hour debates. Douglas had a strong voice while Lincoln’s was high pitched and tended to squeak, but Lincoln was almost a foot taller. Lincoln spoke out against the profitable institution of slavery. He lost the first debate and the Senatorial election, but he became a national figure. Abraham Lincoln appears nine times in A Book of Ages, growing up, teaching himself to read with borrowed books, failing as a businessman. Among the interesting and ironic details are the contents of his pockets when he died.

Jerry Garcia Couture

In August 1992, 50 year-old Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia introduced a line of neckties. A month later he collapsed from exhaustion and was forced to cancel a tour, which tells you something about the rigors of fashion retailing. Garcia appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Pepys, Unexpurgated

On August 18, 1667, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary “… being weary, turned into St Dunstan's church, where I hear an able sermon of the minister of the place. And stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me, and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again...” Pepys was 34. This and other merry entries about the naval bureaucrat's sexual life would remain unread by readers of literature until the unexpurgated diary appeared in the 1970s.

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in America on this day in 1958, three years after its publication in France. The author was 59. The novel is about the relationship between a besotted older man and a young girl. It quickly went to the top of the bestseller list. The book’s success paid for the Nabokovs' move to Switzerland, where the author lived out his life on the top floor of a luxury hotel. Nabokov appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Hendrix at Woodstock

On August 18th, 1969, Jimi Hendrix played The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock, New York. He was 26. He would die a year later, in London, from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. Hendrix appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Clinton Agonistes

On August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton became the first sitting President of the United States to be forced to testify in a criminal case of which he was the target. He was alleged to have lied about an affair while under oath. The interrogation by prosecutors went on for four hours in the Map Room in the White House, and the entire thing was videotaped and broadcast to the nation. Many of the questions were of a probing, extremely personal nature, which no one watching on television could imagine being expected to answer themselves. Clinton answered the questions anyway. His national approval ratings, already above 70 percent, went even higher. He was 51. He and Hillary had been married for 23 years and are still married.

Graceland

On this day in 1977, Elvis Presley died on the floor of his bathroom. He was 42.

Tea Party

On August 16, 1773, Paul Revere dressed up like an Indian and took part in the violent takeover and looting of a commercial merchant vessel sitting in Boston harbor. He was 38, a successful silversmith, engraver and part-time dentist, a businessman with a family to support and plenty to lose if he were caught and tried for this kind of hooliganism. But he did it anyway. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Paul Revere appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Victory over Japan

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japanese forces in a radio broadcast to the nation. He was 44. It was the first time the Japanese public had heard his voice, and since he was speaking in an archaic form of the language no one could understand what he was saying. On New Year’s Day 1946, he announced that he wasn't divine.

Hirohito appears four times in A Book of Ages. At age 20 he was the first emperor to set foot outside Japan. When he was 74 he visited Disneyland. When he was 83 he came very close to apologizing for what happened during World War II and said he hoped it would never happen again.

Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker

On August 15, 1955, Elvis Presley signed a contract with Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis was 20 years-old. Later in the year, Sun Studios sold his contract to RCA. The first song Elvis recorded for RCA was Heartbreak Hotel, which stayed at number one for for eight weeks. Elvis appears nine times in A Book of Ages.

So Lonesome I Could Cry

On August 15, 1952, Hank Williams bought the baby blue Cadillac he'd eventually die in. On August 16, “Jambalaya” hit #1. On August 17, he was jailed for public drunkenness in Alexander City, Alabama, where he was vacationing. He was 28. Williams appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

Social Security

On this day in 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act. It had originated as a pension for old people without means––until 1935 most old people lived in poverty. But conservatives insisted it be a pension for rich and poor alike. The tax to cover it was capped to make sure wealthier Americans weren't paying too much in. And the provision for health care would have to wait until Medicare was passed in the 1960s. But Social Security did alleviate poverty among the elderly. It was efficient, practical, and the checks arrived like clockwork. Still do.

The first person to receive a Social Security check (number 00-000-001) was a retired secretary who'd worked for Calvin Coolidge's Vermont law firm. Her name was Ida May Fuller. She was philosophically opposed to the idea, being a lifelong Republican, but if she qualified she was determined to get the money."It wasn't that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I'd been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it."

Her first check, which arrived in January 1940, was for $22.54. During the last three years of her working life Ida May Fuller paid a total of $24.75 into the Social Security system. By the time she died at age 100, she'd received $22,888.92 in benefits. A nice return. She never thought much of the New Deal. Ida May Fuller appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Hitchcock

Today is the birthday of Alfred Hitchcock. He was born in 1899 in London. The most formative episode in his young life took place at the age of six when his father sent him down the police station with a note instructing the officer in charge to lock him in a cell for ten minutes. Throughout his film career, respectable characters played by Cary Grant and James Stewart and Henry Fonda were repeatedly menaced by policemen, picked up and held on mysterious charges, stopped and questioned, watched, circled, pursued, and occasionally rescued, usually in a way that made the audience laugh with relief. Handcuffs became a leitmotif; sometimes you notice the stars hands, unshackled, are held as if bound. It is amazing how small incidents from our childhoods will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for film direction, but a lot of lesser directors who wished they were half as good as him did. Alfred Hitchcock appears six times in A Book of Ages.

"I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille"

Today's the birthday of Cecil B. DeMille, born in 1881, in the Berkshires where his parents were vacationing. He was 31 when he directed a film called The Squaw Man. It was the first feature produced by the Paramount film studio and one of the very first to come out of an obscure little town in southern California called Hollywood.

DeMille became the most famous film director in the world, his name associated with glamor and spectacle. He instructed famous actors how to act. He parted the Red Sea twice, or directed Moses to do so, in 1923 and again in 1956 when Charlton Heston played Moses.

DeMille played himself at the end of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, helping to lure the mad former film star Norma Desmond out of her mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Gloria Swanson ends the picture with the famous line "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille." Cecil B. DeMille appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Hemingway's Cojones

On August 11, 1937, Ernest Hemingway tore open his shirt showing his hairy chest to Max Eastman and shouted “What do you mean accusing me of impotence?” Then he wrestled Eastman to the floor. Hemingway was 38, Eastman was 44. Both were practitioners of what is known as "muscular prose." The event took place in a publisher's office. Hemingway appears 16 times in A Book of Ages.

Rin Tin Tin

On August 10, 1932, Rin Tin Tin died at his home in Los Angeles. In dog years he would have been 98. Popular legend has him dying in the arms of screen siren Jean Harlow. Tin had retired from pictures the year before. He starred in 40 feature films, 26 of them for Warner Brothers, and is credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. Rin Tin Tin appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Jerry Garcia

On this day in 1995 Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist and eminence grise of The Grateful Dead, died of heart failure. He was 53. 25,000 Deadheads attended a celebration of his life in Golden Gate Park. In November 1995 an asteroid was named after him. Jerry Garcia appears six times in A Book of Ages. He once said: “It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.” All these years later, Cherry Garcia is still the favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” was published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Frost was 41, an age when poets begin to wonder what life might have been like if they'd gone into advertising.

Home Run King

On August 7, 2007, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record of 756 career home runs. He was 43. Bonds had been playing under a cloud ever since it was reported that he’d used performance enhancing steroids beginning in 1998.

When he was the same age former Giant Willie Mays was retired from baseball and seen most often sitting on a golf cart in ads for Interwoven Socks. Say hey!

Emotional Bankruptcy

In August, 1931, F. Scott Fitzgerald published the story Emotional Bankruptcy in the Saturday Evening Post. He was 34. Zelda had been hospitalized for a nervous collapse, his novels weren't selling, and life wasn't as dazzling as it had been just a few years earlier. His work was just as brilliant. It was the audience that had changed, chastened by the Crash, no longer amused by rich people dancing in fountains and drinking champagne from expensive shoes.

Madcap

Writer-director Preston Sturges began writing his memoirs in February 1959 and finished the last chapter on August 6, in his room at the Algonquin Hotel. He died later the same afternoon. He was 60.

He came from the American Midwest, but spent most of his childhood traipsing around Europe with his mother, who ran a string of upmarket perfumeries, and his mother's best friend Isadora Duncan. Preston's mother gave the famous dancer the scarf that got tangled in the spokes of her Bugatti and ended her life. One imagines a brittle upbringing full of madcap adventures and ironic outcomes. Sturges the wise-eyed youth observing the sophisticated open marriages and negotiated romances. This brilliant stuff became the fabric of his plays and screenplays and of the swift sequence of brilliant comedies he directed between 1940 and 1944. Most notably the films The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels and The Palm Beach Story, which he made in quick succession in 1941-42. Sturges appears four times in A Book of Ages.

The Spy Who Couldn't Cook

In August 1942, Julia McWilliams began her new job at the O.S.S., the World War II forerunner of the C.I.A. She was 30. She wore a leopard fur coat to work on cold days, and lived in a tiny two-room apartment in the Brighton Hotel in Washington. For a kitchen she made do with a two-burner hot-plate set on top of the refrigerator in her living room. She wasn’t famous for her cooking, but she later would be, after marrying Paul Child and moving to France. Julia Child appears six times in A Book of Ages.

The Final Word on Wine

In August 1978, Robert M. Parker sent the first issue of The Wine Advocate free to 600 subscribers. He would soon become the most influential person in the wine business, writing reviews that caused vintages, appellations and entire wine regions to soar in price––and crash––depending upon his verdict. He tasted wine for the first time on a holiday in France in 1967, when he was 20. He makes one appearance in A Book of Ages.

The Poet Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792, with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was rich, landed and aristocratic; a baronet born, interestingly enough, in Newark, New Jersey, who'd married two wealthy heiresses in succession. His son Percy was cosseted, rebellious and intellectual. At 18 he was thrown out of Oxford for co-authoring a pamphlet titled "The Necessity of Atheism". At 19 he eloped to Scotland with a 16 year-old girl he'd met in a pub. At 21 he met and fell in love with Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin and eloped with her to the Continent. There, it being a small world, he and Mary quickly met and traveled around with Lord Byron and his coterie.

On a rainy evening in 1816, Byron, Polidori and the Shelleys had a contest to see who could write the most terrifying ghost story. Mary Shelley won with a tale about a man stitched together from body parts borrowed from the deceased. She called her story Frankenstein, and today when you look up "Shelley" you are likely to find her listed first. In their day, however, Shelley was the celebrity. This was the Romantic Era, and he wrote poems that suited the mood. He died, romantically and just short of his 30th birthday, in a boat in a storm off the coast of Italy. He was given a Viking funeral by Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron. The Shelleys appear twice each in A Book of Ages.

Storyteller

Hans Christian Andersen died on this day in 1875. He was 70 years-old. He'd gone to live with some friends on the coast of Denmark. On the morning he died he was served breakfast in bed, but was found a little while later, still in bed. In his hand was a love letter that had been written to him 45 years before. Like so many of his stories, his own life ended ironically and unrequited. Hans Christian Andersen appears five times in A Book of Ages.

PT 109

On August 3, 1943, John F. Kennedy’s PT boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Despite his own injuries, Lt. Kennedy managed to save the lives of most of his crew. He was 26. He'd grown up a child of privilege but dogged by poor health, not unlike the another boy president, Theodore Roosevelt. The hero of the family was always Jack's older brother, Joe Jr., who would die in combat in August, 1944. JFK appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Born to Run

On August 3, 1974, Bruce Springsteen performed his last gig as an opening act. His third album was released on August 25th, a year later. He was 25. Born To Run proved to be his breakthrough, peaking at number three on the Billboard chart. With its background of strings, glockenspiel, keyboards and more than a dozen guitar tracks arranged by Phil Spector, the title song took three and a half months to record. Springsteen appears once in A Book of Ages.

Anne Frank's last words

On August 1, 1944, Anne Frank wrote the last entry in her diary. "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart..." The Franks were arrested by the Gestapo three days later after Otto Frank’s business partner informed on them. Anne Frank died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp a month before it was liberated by the Americans.

Julia

The new Julia Child movie opens this weekend. The shelves are full of books about her and by her, by people who remember her, and by people who want to be like her or at least want to cook like her. Her kitchen is in the Smithsonian. Her voice is in our heads whenever we cook, although it might be the voice of Dan Ackroyd. No wonder. She is our modern domestic goddess, never mind Martha Stewart and Alice Waters. (All three women have several anecdotes each in A Book of Ages.)

What surprises me is that Nora Ephron didn't think Julia had enough back story for a movie of her own, that she needed to share the screen with a young woman blogging about her recipes. What can you say? Today's TV obsession with chefs and kitchens has more to do with egos and speed and extravagance, with concept, less to do with the down-to-earth creation of good food and eating it. This young wife, played by Amy Adams, promises to cook every recipe from The Art of French Cooking in one year. Hilarity ensues. But which life are we more interested in? Who do we identify with?

That's the point, I guess. Julia works for the spy agency called the O.S.S. during WWII, travels to India and China, marries an urbane diplomat, moves to Paris, enrolls at the Cordon Bleu to learn French cooking (she didn't know how to cook at all until her mid-30s), she writes a cookbook (which her publisher turns down), then goes on public TV and becomes a star. Every life has an arc, and Julia's is interesting and full of surprises. She appears six times in A Book of Ages.

My book is about how famous lives reflect our own, so it's the private, domestic details I find most interesting. Freud and Henry Ford collecting antiques, Steve Martin collecting art, Churchill learning to paint, Jack Kerouac and Edward Elgar learning to drive, Hitler becoming a vegetarian. So I include Julia Child's first meal on her first trip to France––she was 36. The most vivid detail I discovered was the hotplate in her D.C. apartment, where she didn't cook very much or very well.