Literary Influence

My favorite authors are Isaac Azimov (science fiction), Will Durant (history), Kevin Phillips (politics) and Martin Mayer (money and banking). These writers not only made the topics interesting, they tackled them from unique perspectives, and I love their writing styles. These authors, then, would help to guide me. I started reflecting on the books I had read over the years written by these and other authors. I especially loved individual histories where a single person made so much of a social difference. For example, “Transforming Paris” – written about the mid-nineteenth century redevelopment of the City of Light under the close architectural supervision of Baron von Haussmann, and, Los Angeles’ great city engineer, William Mulholland who, among other things, brought water to the city from a source two hundred miles to the north and was largely responsible for the important city Los Angeles has become. The effort of each of these men resulted in epic urban development accomplishments. Thus an epic adventure affecting a society of diverse people came to mind, hopefully written from a unique perspective.

I realized during this process that various papers and reports I had written over the years followed the style of Will Durant – cleverly (if I may say so) clipped (fast moving) and to the point, always connecting dot after dot to make a current point and to lead the reader to his next point with interesting, compelling and often with tongue-in-cheek analogies. I could only hope I would be nearly as effective. I was ready to try.