Word: gann
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hostage to Fortune, Ernest K. Gann...
...Ernest K. Gann Knopf; 544 pages...
Readers of Fate Is the Hunter, Ernest K. Gann's unnerving account of his days as an airline and Air Transport Command pilot, will recognize the flying style. What is surprising about this rambunctious autobiography, however, is that although Gann tells a number of good wing-and-prayer yarns, some of his most surprising adventures have had nothing to do with aviation. He has been a newsreel cameraman, soldier, Broadway actor, polo player, farmer, cartoonist, commercial fisherman, deepwater yachtsman, Hollywood talent scout and, of course, a bestselling novelist (The High and the Mighty, Band of Brothers). He wrote, directed...
...Gann would be the perfect subject for a memoir if gentlemanly reserve did not glaze over his confessions when he describes the people he has known. He gives a vivid account of how it was to see the dome of the Taj Mahal from several feet away, but is woefully reticent, for in stance, when he encounters another monument, Actor John Wayne. Chapters given to his divorce and remarriage show little more than the rough shape of a life. Only when Gann describes the drowning of his oldest son, who was chief mate on an unseaworthy tanker, does uncalculated emotion...
Doing so makes the Administration seem out of step with not only Congress but also general public opinion, especially after the passage of the tax-reducing Jarvis-Gann initiative in California. Says a leading committee staffer on Ways and Means: "Bill Steiger has got a tap root in the ground that's 20 feet long. You might have been able to blast him out six weeks ago, but not now. Where was Carter then?" Complains another Ways and Means official: "Carter has us so confused at this point that the issues are a mess...