More praise for All the Money in the World in this weekend’s Sunday Styles section of the New York Times:

Studded with tables, charts and sidebars, “All the Money in the World” is full of rags-to-riches stories and colorful anecdotes that make it as compulsively readable as best sellers like Michael Gross’s “740 Park” and Steven Gaines’s “Philistines at the Hedgerow.”

Considering whether or not to post about this reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of Blackadder, in Season 4:

George: You know it’s funny, but painting was the only thing I was ever any good at.

Blackadder: Well, it’s a pity you didn’t keep it up.

George: Well, as a matter of fact I did, actually. I mean [takes out pictures] I mean normally I hadn’t thought I would show them to anyone, because they’re just embarrassing daubs really, but you know, ah, they give me pleasure. I’m embarrassed to show them to you now as it happens, but there you go, for what they’re worth. To be honest, I should have my hands cut off, I mean…

Blackadder: George! These are brilliant! Why didn’t you tell us about these before?

George: Well you know, one doesn’t want to blow one’s own trumpet.

Blackadder: You might at least have told us you had a trumpet…

In video here.

Since commenter Kittlittered tagged me with the 8 Things About Me meme, I don’t see that I have any choice. Here’s 8 random things about me (bottom right, aged 10):

1. If I hadn’t been called Paul, my mum would probably have named me Noah.
2. The longest train journey I have ever took was 96 hours, from Novgorod to Irkutsk, Russia (including a few hours in Moscow to change trains).
3. Watching people bite into an ice cream, or even thinking about biting into an ice cream, sends a shiver down my spine.
4. I seem to have developed a (weak) phobia of cows. (I’ve written about it before here.)
5. I can speak fluent Russian, but my German is limited to “I am too weak for this life” (thanks to Liukchik) and my Finnish is limited to “an independent woman.”
6. I have stared down the barrel of a gun—it’s a lot larger close up.
7. My favorite pen is the Pilot P700 (fine). They retail for less than $2.
8. I never wanted to live in New York, but now I’m here I don’t want to live anywhere else.

Over to you Clive and you Jen.

It’s difficult to describe Peru without slipping into cliché. So I am going to try to keep these blog posts brief and hopefully let the pictures speak for themselves.

We spent the first two days in Lima, a perpetually cloudy coastal city surrounded by desert that has an average annual rainfall of about 3 cubic centimeters. Despite Lima’s reputation for being uninspiring, I had an interesting time exploring the Indian markets, restaurants, bars and stores. But the adventure really began on day 3, when we flew to the ancient Inca capital Cuzco, about 350 miles southwest of Lima and about 11,500 ft above sea level.

Above is the view across Cuzco’s central square, the Plaza de Armas, towards the town’s main cathedral. In true Conquistador style, the Spanish built this complex of three churches on top of an Inca temple.

The Compania de Jesus Church, another outstanding building in Cuzco’s Plaza de Armas. The entire city has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Although Cuzco has a population of over 300,000 people, the surrounding mountains can make the city appear deceptively small. Here’s a view from a side street about 30 seconds walk from the city center.

Peeking through a wooden fence across Cuzco.

Although the buildings in Cuzco were impressive, it was the people who really made the city interesting for me. So many different features and fashions that I had never seen before.

Cuzco women shooting the breeze on the steps of the Plaza de Armas.

And a shy little girl peeking out from behind an Alpaca rug.

More soon.

New York is gray today. A complete opposite of those blue skies six years ago.

On the New York Times City Room blog, reporters and photographers reminiscence about where they were and what they were doing on 9/11. Here’s an excerpt from a reporter who was prevented from getting closer to the towers by a cop:

I decided to sneak around St. Paul’s cemetery and loop back around to the action via Fulton Street.

In my zeal to get close, I had not noticed the falling bodies. Then I nearly stepped into a puddle of blood that was congealing beside what looked like the titanium gear of a pulverized airliner.

It was then that I suddenly noticed the discarded briefcases, dress loafers and sensibly heeled office wear all around me. Off to the side, I watched as paramedics furiously tended to a stricken man, corpulent, middle-age and seemingly drained of life. Had he been grazed by a piece of falling debris or overcome by the stress of walking down so many flights? I never found out.

I swung around St. Paul’s, headed past the makeshift trauma center, and pushed against the flow of paralegals, mailroom clerks and suit-and-tie executives who seemed dazed but composed as they trudged eastward. Their silence was astounding.

You can read the rest of the post here. Other reminiscences here.

Photos from Peru to follow on a more appropriate day.

Well, here we are. A couple of hours and I will be on my way to Lima. This trip to Peru has to be one of the most impulsive things I have done since I quit the Western Morning News and headed for New York almost four years ago.

While I’m away—on September 4 to be precise—a book that I spent a good part of the past 18 months working on will be published: All The Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make–and Spend–Their Fortunes.

Between January 2006 and spring of this year I interviewed some of America’s richest people, including Ross Perot and his son Ross Perot Jr., Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Chemicals tycoon Jon Huntsman and his son, Utah Governor John Huntsman Jr., and many others. I worked with a couple of great editors and some very talented writers. All in all, a grueling but often exciting and exceedingly worthwhile experience. (There’s an early Publisher’s Weekly review here.)

And just before I jet off, if you haven’t read David Reminck’s excellent response to the recent controversial study published in the US about the “Israel Lobby,” here’s a taster:

Mearsheimer and Walt are not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. They are right to describe the moral violation in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. (In this, most Israelis and most American Jews agree with them.) They were also right about Iraq. The strategic questions they raise now, particularly about Israel’s privileged relationship with the United States, are worth debating––just as it is worth debating whether it is a good idea to be selling arms to Saudi Arabia. But their announced objectives have been badly undermined by the contours of their argument—a prosecutor’s brief that depicts Israel as a singularly pernicious force in world affairs. Mearsheimer and Walt have not entirely forgotten their professional duties, and they periodically signal their awareness of certain complexities. But their conclusions are unmistakable: Israel and its lobbyists bear a great deal of blame for the loss of American direction, treasure, and even blood.

In Mearsheimer and Walt’s cartography, the Israel lobby is not limited to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is a loose yet well-oiled coalition of Jewish-American organizations, “watchdog” groups, think tanks, Christian evangelicals, sympathetic journalists, and neocon academics. This is not a cabal but a world in which Abraham Foxman gives the signal, Pat Robertson describes his apocalyptic rapture, Charles Krauthammer pumps out a column, Bernard Lewis delivers a lecture—and the President of the United States invades another country. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Exxon-Mobil barely exist.

Brilliant stuff. You can read the rest here.