What the Heck Happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Book Description

Release Date: October 1, 2012

THE GREATEST IMMIGRANT SUCCESS STORY OF OUR TIMEHis story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages.

He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.

By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe.

Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world.

Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry.

Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family.

Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow bodybuilders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world.

He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.

With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together.

Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice.

Here is Arnold, with total recall.

Comments from PJ Lifestyle frequent commenter Ari:

I bought his biography for _____ for Christmas, and then I spent two days reading it from cover to cover? What happened?

He’s got this life: 2/3 of this book is poor kid from the sticks learns business and makes his way in the world. The last 1/3, he becomes governor and literally forgets every lesson he learned from his own experience and reading.

What happened? Really? I mean, he has bits in the last 1/3 that completely contradict what he lived through— AND NOTICED!– in the first 2/3. What happened?

He starts a bricklaying business, for $3.75 registration fee, with his immigrant buddy, because the union hall doesn’t have enough work. He works on movies in non- union nations. He chides Sargent Shriver for not relying on the free market to sort out milk prices. He gets elected………….and turns into a Mexican President- what can I build using public moneys that is a monument to MEEEEEE? He doesn’t connect rolling black-outs and skyrocketing energy prices to his policies, at all. Policies like, breaking down dams, requiring fuel mixes……….he gets upset when people question the content of his production- the violence in his movies- but he questions the production of someone else’s material- car engines. If he wants great green cars, why not open a company that makes green cars? He makes all sorts of companies to provide the things that people really want- sweat-stained weightbelts, is the gooniest example I can think of.

Conan is made for half the price, in Spain, than California, with union-workers. It’s even more half-price than Italy, with union workers.

He even cooks up an early Obamacare.

And, second, do the Kennedys viscerally hate all Americans? They keep reverting to ” You all killed my relatives.” Like, Maria having panic attacks when Arnold wants to get into politics. She also has this really strong divide between family and friends ( all her friends are high-achievers- Oprah Winfrey or her producer) and the servants, which, I think is everybody else in America. Do they really hate and despise us? We keep not electing them, Or maybe we elect them some places,

And what is with the slumming with Special Olympics and extraordinarily poor people? Is this some ” God Bless You, Mr Rosewater” moment? They might care, but they really need people who are entirely obviously never, ever going to compete with them in any fashion? I mean, there isn’t a single middle-class American in contact with the entire clan. Not one.

He could have proposed the system that gave him his first freedom: an apprenticeship while in high school: and California would be nearly 8 years into this, with extraordinarily trained young workers. That would be prosperous like crazy. Like, seriously, Summer School? The movie? Has an indifferent teacher seeking tenure, slow students, all that. But two of the students are special effects brilliant kids. Why aren’t they in an apprenticeship program? Why aren’t there apprentice-ships for building computers? or building buildings? or machining solar panels? or stores? or cooking?

Fredericksburg, a city in Texas, was settled by Germans. It has a system like that. Kids graduate ready to take the Medical Assistant licensing exam, or a hair-dressing exam, or become professional cowboys. They’ve already managed stock. I met one in Austin. He was married, with a kid by age 20. Not, poor, living on welfare, clueless, but actually working on a ranch, while his wife taught dance classes, which is what she had studied in school. Their parents, on both sides, approved. He had been very business-like about getting out of high school. He didn’t like one class, and rather than drop-out, he worked with the teacher and counselor to pass. He knew he had a life waiting for him. He was working at Michael’s, the craft store, the same Christmas I worked. His girlfriend, too. He got a friend hired, the kid didn’t show up, he called him and bawled him out for making him look bad. That’s what people want, right?

What happened?