News of My Death Was Greatly Exaggerated: How I Survived the Texas Depression : My Financial Strategies for the '90s - Hardcover

Nearly the size of the record albums that it celebrates, this coffee-table book on Motown will delight browsers by providing a pictorial glimpse at the stars who made Detroit the center of black popular music in the 1960s. The introduction is written by Berry Gordy, who drilled the Temptations in their precise dance steps and fashioned the Motown sound of The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson. Well-known pop music critics Fong-Torres and Marsh provide a history and critical discography, respectively. But it is the art work, including photographs by Anne Liebowitz and many others, that will spark the most interest. Certain to be a popular gift item, this album will also find an appreciative audience in public libraries and music collections. Not all illustrations seen. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/90; see also Tony Turner's All That Glittered: My Life with the Supremes , reviewed below.--Ed.
-Tim LaBorie, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Born and raised in Michigan, Hall became a successful real-estate entrepreneur there, then in the early 1980s moved to Dallas, where he continued his economic rise until disaster struck his adopted state. First oil and gas prices plummeted, later the real-estate market virtually collapsed and financial institutions started folding. Determined to avoid bankruptcy, according to Hall, he waged a long battle against green-mailers, officious federal bureaucrats, predatory creditors and others, emerging bloody but unbowed. Here he shows a talent for making complex economic maneuvers understandable to the lay reader. Further, Hall lays bare his teacherly soul when he explains the lessons he learned from his ordeals and lays out his strategies for the 1990s. The book is frank and of great interest, despite much annoying Texas boosterism.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.