Review by cooldork7 -- Burn Zones by Jorge P. Newbery
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Review by cooldork7 -- Burn Zones by Jorge P. Newbery
[Following is a volunteer review of "Burn Zones" by Jorge P. Newbery.]
The title of Jorge Newbery’s book Burn Zones refers to a term in competitive cycling describing “relatively short periods of extraordinary effort that separated the winners and losers”. Everyone’s life contains such “burn zones,” according to Newbery, who tells his extraordinary life story in this compelling book. Dropping out of high school at age 16 (with his parents’ permission), Newbery undertakes an entrepreneurial odyssey which takes him from paperboy to elite competitive cyclist to real estate mogul—with a few “crashes” along the way.
Adopting a “straight edge” lifestyle (no alcohol, no drugs, no promiscuous sex), Newbery starts his business career as a paperboy, then buys and restores a tricycle designed to sell ice cream. After obtaining his GED, Newbery becomes a punk-rock impresario of sorts, publishing magazines, producing records, and staging shows on a portable collection of concrete blocks. His restlessness and his need to prove he could excel at something led him to attempt to win a spot on the U.S. Cycling team for the 1988 Summer Olympics.
After a harrowing Olympic Trials, Newbery again moves on, this time to real estate, where he quickly establishes himself as a top broker and mortgage loan originator. He parlays his financial success into a career as a developer specializing in acquiring neglected properties and turning them around. Newbery’s ultimate prize—an 1,100-unit apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio called Woodland Meadows—would prove to be the “burn zone” that changes his life completely.
Newbery’s attitude towards the “elite” of society is a key theme throughout the book. It informs his interest in punk rock music and culture, his involvement in the Occupy Cincinnati protests of 2011, and his current project, American Homeowner Preservation. Throughout the book he returns time and again to his belief in the underdog, his passion for the outcasts and forgotten people of society, and his desire to seek “a better country for all”. He goes into details of his own family’s struggle with prejudice, his battles against law enforcement, and the “elite’s” disdain for people of color, punk rockers, and others outside the fringes of society.
In the end, it’s this desire to help others and a search for personal peace which informs the remainder of the book. Newbery is a strong, powerful voice telling a familiar story of American success and failure from a unique perspective. It’s a book that should be shared by the capitalist and the activist within all of us, if only because we need to discover our own “burn zones.”
I give this book three out of four stars. Newbery is eloquent and passionate, and the book flows well, except for a couple of instances where his passion allows the narrative to go astray, especially when he spends several pages memorializing punk-rock friends who died too early. The book is very well-edited, with only a couple of typos, no profanity of any kind, and no erotic scenes (thanks to Newberry’s “straight edge” lifestyle).
Despite the three-star rating, I still highly recommend Burn Zones. It was a pleasant surprise to read, and like all great autobiographies, makes you want to meet the author in person.
******
Burn Zones
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
The title of Jorge Newbery’s book Burn Zones refers to a term in competitive cycling describing “relatively short periods of extraordinary effort that separated the winners and losers”. Everyone’s life contains such “burn zones,” according to Newbery, who tells his extraordinary life story in this compelling book. Dropping out of high school at age 16 (with his parents’ permission), Newbery undertakes an entrepreneurial odyssey which takes him from paperboy to elite competitive cyclist to real estate mogul—with a few “crashes” along the way.
Adopting a “straight edge” lifestyle (no alcohol, no drugs, no promiscuous sex), Newbery starts his business career as a paperboy, then buys and restores a tricycle designed to sell ice cream. After obtaining his GED, Newbery becomes a punk-rock impresario of sorts, publishing magazines, producing records, and staging shows on a portable collection of concrete blocks. His restlessness and his need to prove he could excel at something led him to attempt to win a spot on the U.S. Cycling team for the 1988 Summer Olympics.
After a harrowing Olympic Trials, Newbery again moves on, this time to real estate, where he quickly establishes himself as a top broker and mortgage loan originator. He parlays his financial success into a career as a developer specializing in acquiring neglected properties and turning them around. Newbery’s ultimate prize—an 1,100-unit apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio called Woodland Meadows—would prove to be the “burn zone” that changes his life completely.
Newbery’s attitude towards the “elite” of society is a key theme throughout the book. It informs his interest in punk rock music and culture, his involvement in the Occupy Cincinnati protests of 2011, and his current project, American Homeowner Preservation. Throughout the book he returns time and again to his belief in the underdog, his passion for the outcasts and forgotten people of society, and his desire to seek “a better country for all”. He goes into details of his own family’s struggle with prejudice, his battles against law enforcement, and the “elite’s” disdain for people of color, punk rockers, and others outside the fringes of society.
In the end, it’s this desire to help others and a search for personal peace which informs the remainder of the book. Newbery is a strong, powerful voice telling a familiar story of American success and failure from a unique perspective. It’s a book that should be shared by the capitalist and the activist within all of us, if only because we need to discover our own “burn zones.”
I give this book three out of four stars. Newbery is eloquent and passionate, and the book flows well, except for a couple of instances where his passion allows the narrative to go astray, especially when he spends several pages memorializing punk-rock friends who died too early. The book is very well-edited, with only a couple of typos, no profanity of any kind, and no erotic scenes (thanks to Newberry’s “straight edge” lifestyle).
Despite the three-star rating, I still highly recommend Burn Zones. It was a pleasant surprise to read, and like all great autobiographies, makes you want to meet the author in person.
******
Burn Zones
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: McDowell by William H. Coles
