"I'm writing this down in case something should happen to me. My name is Allen Brewster. I'm nine years old...There's a brown car parked outside in the street with two men in it. They're watching..."

- Allen Brewster, Top Secret

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Summer is officially here (!), so I thought I'd stack my reading list for the next few months with some favorites of mine from summers past. I first picked up Top Secret off the shelf of Starkweather Elementary's library in the second grade, and made a habit of rereading it every few months or so, even going so far as to hide it in *ahem* a top secret *ahem* part of the library. Sorry, Mrs. Burston...

Moving on, the story follows Allen Brewster, an ambitious fourth grader who wants to win the annual science fair, proving his teacher Miss Green wrong. His project? To create human photosynthesis, turning sunlight into food for humans. His test subject? Himself.

No one though seems to believe he can do it, even after he turns green and sprouts roots, convinced that it's a trick. That is, except for the President of the United States. Suddenly Allen and his discovery become Top Secret. [JG]
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John Reynolds Gardiner ( 1944 - 2006) was an engineer living and working in Los Angeles, and the author of three children's books including Top Secret, General Butterfingers, and Stone Fox, which sold over four million copies. 

​Mark Simont (1915 - 2013) was born in Paris and the son of a Spanish painter. Throughout his career, Simont created political cartoons and illustrated many children's books, including Top Secret, 13 Clocks, and A Tree is Nice, for which he won the 1957 Caldecott Medal for U.S. children's book illustration.
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"I looked at myself in the mirror again. I looked perfectly normal really, except for one small change. My skin had turned bright green, the color of a leaf on a tree." 

- Allen Brewster, Top Secret

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Ali Almossawi
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Rene Ahdieh
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“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” 

- Santiago, The Alchemist

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Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. His books have sold over 150 million copies in more than 170 countries and been translated into 73 languages. 

Website
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“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.” ​

- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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"It now becomes your duty to try and separate the facts from the fancy." 

- Judge, Twelve Angry Men

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Reginald Rose (1920 - 2002) was born and raised in Manhattan. He enlisted in 1943  after Pearl Harbor and served in the Pacific until 1946.

In 1954, Rose received a jury duty summons to a manslaughter case. The jurors took eight hours of heated argument to ultimately deliver the unanimous verdict; Rose, a writer since his teen years, thought the scenario would make an excellent television play. 

Rose also wrote a story titled The Incredible World of Horace Ford, which was adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1963. 

Terence Rattigan
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William Gibson
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Maxwell Anderson
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"I consider my six or seven years at Disney's the greatest art school in the world...There is no other place where such a vast number of the very best artists all worked in the same studio."

— Eyvind Earle

"Beauty is the thing we are all searching for...Whatever beauty is, I feel it, and as long as I can I shall try to find more and more beauty, and to put it down so others can see what I have seen." 

— Eyvind Earle (1916 - 2000)

I first heard the name 'Ogilvy' six years ago on some forgotten episode of Mad Men. Intrigued by the idea of potentially meeting a real-life Don Draper, I cracked open the cover of Confessions of an Advertising Man the next day. Inside were some of the most juiciest secrets on business, leadership, and life, putting Don Draper's own to shame; namely, the practical value of honesty in work and at home. 

I (re)read at least one of his a year. Confessions is high-level; witty, eloquent, and mindset-shaping. On Advertising is the bottom level; tactical, creative and packed with direct, actionable instruction. Blood is philosophical, psychological; meditative. A holy trinity of the genius that is 'the father of modern advertising.' But The Unpublished David Ogilvy, republished in 2012, fills in more gaps of the man —the agency he built, the ads he created, and the culture of creativity he nurtured — for 58 years via a mosaic of impressionistic tiles in the form of letters, notes, memos, speeches, ads, interviews, and photographs. 

The man loved lists. Hierarchical ones. Ones that cut through and capture the essence of a thing. And he hated paper clips. Most interestingly though, Unpublished delves beneath the hood of Ogilvy and Mather's legendary corporate culture and explores its core features, ending on an insightful look at the desperate need for and priceless value of leadership. 

If you only read one of Ogilvy's, oh, hell, don't make me choose. Just grab one. It'll sell the others. [JG]
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After dropping out of his English college and moving to France to cook 'in a great kitchen' for 68 hours a week, David Ogilvy then returned to the home island to sell Aga cookers door-to-door. He next cut his teeth in consumer research with George Gallup at the Audience Research Institute in New Jersey.

At 38, like the man's autobiographical note above, he took a left turn into a copywriter chair at the London ad agency Mather and Crowther. During WWII, he served in the field of espionage and wartime propaganda at Camp X, successfully sabotaging the reputation of business supplying the Nazis with industrial materials.

After the war, and a full decade at Gallup, Ogilvy started his own agency with the support of Mather and Crowther. In ten years, he turned $6,000 into over $60+ million in billings on Madison Avenue. Ogilvy is known as 'the father of modern advertising' and his book Confessions of an Advertising Man, a tongue-in-cheek-titled, tour-de-force book on business ethics published in '63, remains a perennial seller to this day.
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12. "Companies that have cultivated their individual identities by shaping values, making heroes, spelling out rites and rituals, and acknowledging the cultural network have an edge."

11. "The mass of people are skeptical of a great man, especially one with a great mind. They would rather vote for someone who is mediocre, like themselves."

10. "Every advertisement must tell the whole sales story, because the public does not read advertisements in series." 

9. "Study the best time of for calling; between twelve and two p.m. you will not be welcome, whereas a call out an unorthodox time of day — after supper in the summer for instance — will often succeed ... In general, study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite." 

8. "Escape from the sterile influences of dons, who are nothing more than pickled undergraduates." — Advice to to his 18-year-old great nephew about whether to attend university or enter the work force

7. "Whenever you write a commercial, bear in mind that is is likely to be seen by your children, your wife — and your conscience." 

6. "Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in your personality." — Burleigh Gardner and Sidney Levy, Harvard Business Review

5. "We have exercised care in selecting our clients. That is why our roster is such a remarkable one. Wee seek clients who manufacture a product which we can be proud to advertise — a product which we can recommend without reservation to our own families. We seek clients whose basic attitudes to business are about the same as ours. The agency-client relationship is an intimate one, and it only works well when there is a strong ingredient of mutual respect on both sides." 

4. "We have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamp post, for support, not for illumination." 

3. "I would like all of you to make a New Years Resolution. Cut your wordage in half. This will make it possible for us to finish our homework before midnight." 

2. "Whatever you do in life, however humble, is OK if you do it right." 

1. "I believe in the Scottish proverb: "Hard work never killed a man." Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They never die of hard work." 
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