When I Stop Talking Youll Know Im Dead

Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed him--the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood--he has found a way to put on a show and sell tickets at the door. "All life was a theater and I wanted to put it up on a stage," he writes. "I wanted to set the world under a marquee that read: 'Jerry Weintraub Presents.'" In When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead, we follow Weintraub from his first great success at age twenty-six with Elvis Presley, whom he took on the road with the help of Colonel Tom Parker; to the immortal days with Sinatra and Rat Pack glory; to his crowning hits as a movie producer, starting with Robert Altman and Nashville, continuing with Oh, God!, The Karate Kid movies, and Diner, among others, and summiting with Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen. Along the way, we'll watch as Jerry moves from the poker tables of Palm Springs (the games went on for days), to the power rooms of Hollywood, to the halls of the White House, to Red Square in Moscow and the Great Palace in Beijing-all the while counseling potentates, poets, and kings, with clients and confidants like George Clooney, Bruce Willis, George H. W. Bush, Armand Hammer, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bobby Fischer . . .well, the list goes on forever. And of course, the story is not yet over . . .as the old-timers say, "The best is yet to come." As Weintraub says, "When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead." With wit, wisdom, and the cool confidence that has colored his remarkable career, Jerry chronicles a quintessentially American journey, one marked by luck, love, and improvisation. The stories he tells and the lessons we learn are essential, not just for those who love movies and music, but for businessmen, entrepreneurs, artists . . . everyone.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it, taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city, and his faith preserved. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple, and unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. With exuberance, humor, and real scholarship, Rich Cohen's Israel is Real offers "a serious attempt by a gifted storyteller to enliven and elucidate Jewish religious, cultural, and political history . . . A powerful narrative" (Los Angeles Times).

Alex Trumble is a pretty ordinary kid—except for the fact that his IQ borders on genius, and he loves to read books on vortexes and time travel. But when two angry hit men kidnap his big brother Steven, Alex's life changes fast. Inventing a time machine (using an iPod, mirrors, duct tape, and a laser pointer) is only half the battle. With the help of the time-bending Dingus, Alex and his best friend Todd must travel back in time to collect clues, outwit the bad guys, and race against the clock to save his family from total oblivion.

The New York Times bestselling author Rich Cohen tells the story of Herbie: the king of Bensonhurst, the world’s best negotiator—and Cohen’s wise, wisecracking father. Meet Herbie Cohen, World’s Greatest Negotiator, dealmaker, risk taker, raconteur, adviser to presidents and corporations, hostage and arms negotiator, lesson giver and justice seeker, author of the how-to business classic You Can Negotiate Anything. And, of course, Rich Cohen’s father. The Adventures of Herbie Cohen follows our hero from his youth spent running around Brooklyn with his pals Sandy Koufax, Larry King, Who Ha, Inky, and Ben the Worrier (many of them members of his Bensonhurst gang, “the Warriors”); to his days coaching basketball in the army in Europe; to his years as a devoted and unconventional husband, father, and freelance guru crossing the country to give lectures, settle disputes, and hone the art of success while finding meaning in this strange, funny world. This book is an ode to a remarkable man by an adoring but not undiscerning son, and a treasure trove of hilarious antics and counterintuitive wisdom. (Some of this stuff you can use at home.) It’s a bildungsroman, a collection of tall tales, the unfolding of a unique biography coiled around Herbie’s great insight and guiding principle: The secret of life is to care, but not that much. Includes black-and-white photographs

Rich Cohen enters the Stones epic as a young journalist on the road with the band and quickly falls under their sway - privy to the jokes, the camaraderie, the bitchiness, the hard living. Inspired by a lifelong appreciation of the music that borders on obsession, Cohen's chronicle of the band is informed by the rigorous views of a kid who grew up on the music and for whom the Stones will always be the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time. This is a non-fiction book that reads like a novel filled with the greatest musicians, agents and artists of the most indelible age in pop culture. It's a book only Rich, with his unique access, experience and love of the band could write.

Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-Picayune The fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. Working his way up from a roadside fruit peddler to conquering the United Fruit Company, Zemurray became a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. Zemurray lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments and precipitating the bloody thirty-six-year Guatemalan civil war, the Banana Man lived a monumental and sometimes dastardly life. Rich Cohen's brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden power broker, driven by an indomitable will to succeed.

Sweet and Low is the bittersweet, hilarious story of Ben Eisenstadt, who invented sugar packets and Sweet'N Low, and amassed the great fortune that would later destroy his family. It is a story of immigrants, Jewish gangsters, and Brooklyn; of sugar, saccharine, obesity, and diet crazes; of jealousy, betrayal, and ambition. Disinherited along with his mother and siblings, Rich Cohen has written a rancorous, colorful history of his extraordinary family and their pursuit of the American dream.