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Book on elderly wisdom offers few real insights

How to Live: A Search for Wisdom From Old People

By Henry Alford

(Twelve; $23.99; 262pp.)

Actor and writer Henry Alford had a simple yet captivating idea: People must learn something in seven or more decades on Earth, and the younger set could probably benefit from what their elders have learned.

The thought launched Alford on a quest to interview senior citizens and absorb their knowledge before they die.

His subjects include Doris Haddock, or Granny D, known for her cross-country walk in support of campaign finance reform, Yale University literature professor Harold Bloom, counterculture hero and LSD advocate Ram Dass and a dumpster-diving aerospace engineer named Eugene Loh.

The results are somewhat more lackluster than Alford had probably hoped. Granny D`s main message seems to be that it`s important to keep busy, even when the body is tired. Loh emphasizes the importance of economy as he doles out blackened bananas.

With Bloom and Dass, Alford engages in rambling conversations about wisdom and enlightenment that seem to have no real end or conclusion.

Alford supplements these conversations with observations gleaned from reading about wisdom and aging, but that leaves his book feeling much like a doctoral dissertation. This is not light reading.

The most compelling part of Alford`s narrative comes from his parents` divorce. Early in his endeavor, he interviews his mother and stepfather, a man suffering from depression and prescription drug addiction. Three days later, his stepfather overdoses. Then, instead of cleaning up, he asks a neighbor for sleeping pills. Alford`s mother leaves him.

Alford recounts the ensuing separation, his mother`s move into a senior living center and his stepfather`s struggle to come to terms with divorce after the age of 70. His mother`s determination to live her final years alone and well, rather than coupled and compromised, says more about learning from past mistakes than anything offered by Alford`s supposedly wise interviewees.

Otherwise, the most memorable tip might be Alford`s observation that ordering a bag of assorted bagels containing one garlic bagel, leaves a person with a bag of garlic bagels. That`s wisdom to be used.

Reviewed by M.L.Johnson, Associated Press writer

Book links JFK murder to killing of two other leaders

Legacy of Secrecy - The Long Shadow

of the JFK Assassination

By Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann

(Counterpoint; $33; 848 pp.)

A new, heavily researched book on John F. Kennedy`s murder and its investigation sees links with a bagful of sensational stories, from President Johnson`s fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviets to the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.

The links all connect with the main contention in "Legacy of Secrecy" that the assassination was engineered by Carlos Marcello, longtime Mafia boss in New Orleans. That theory is far from new. There`s evidence that Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president`s brother, believed it. Authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann broaden the theme.

Marcello had a special grudge against the Kennedys because Robert, who fought organized crime, once had him deported to an uncomfortable exile in Central America. Born in Tunisia, Marcello carried false papers that gave Guatemala as his country of origin. He soon found his way back to the United States.

Not long after President Kennedy`s death, Johnson sought to make sure of a friendly voice on the investigating commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Johnson is quoted as warning a favorite senator that he`d better join it, to prevent Castro and Khrushchev "from kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour."

Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga., was reluctant to serve. Johnson was apparently so vehement that Russell changed his mind and agreed to become a member.

White supremacist Joseph A. Milteer had aroused suspicion when police recorded him predicting, less than two weeks before the assassination, that Kennedy would be killed by a high powered rifle with a telescopic sight, fired from an upper-floor window. That`s the official version of what actually happened in Dallas. The new book says a proper investigation of the prediction could have led to Marcello through Milteer`s contacts with Mafia figures, and might have frustrated the assassination.

Four years later, the book says, Marcello brokered a deal in which Milteer paid James Earl Ray to kill Martin Luther King Jr. It also finds that Marcello`s biographer, John H. Davis, and journalist David E. Scheim made "compelling cases" for Marcello`s involvement in the killing of Robert Kennedy.

"Legacy of Secrecy" is the second of two volumes - more than 1,700 pages including 170 of photos, facsimiles and footnotes. Waldron worked for seven years in the criminal justice system in Georgia. Hartmann is a psychotherapist and radio show host. They have worked on the Kennedy assassination since 1988.

Their first volume, "Ultimate Sacrifice," was published in 2005. As the climax to earlier secret U.S. actions against Castro, it presented an elaborate "State-Defense Contingency Plan for a Coup in Cuba," approved by the Kennedys. Execution of the coup was halted by Kennedy`s assassination, 10 days before the coup was due to start on Dec. 1, 1963.

Reviewed by Carl Hartman for The Associated Press

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