Transcript
Introduction
David
Dad took me to buy a car. It was to be my first negotiation, an experience akin in his mind to losing one's virginity. He made a long list in preparation for this transaction, a catalog of features my first car had to have. Each characteristic of each candidate was given a value between one and 22. According to this list, the perfect vehicle for me was a used Honda Civic with less than 70,000 miles. We looked and looked and then amazingly he balked when we actually found it. "I don't get you," I said. "It checks every one of our boxes." "You haven't learned a thing." He said. "This car has all the what, but it is seriously deficient in the how." "What are you talking about?" "Did you see all that writing? The car was covered with names, red letters on the driver's door that said, 'Bobby', blue letters on the passenger door that said, 'Barry', yellow letters on the hood that said, 'Billy', this presumably being the name of the car itself." "So what?" I said. "We can have it repainted." "You're missing the point. He said. "A schmuck owned this car."
That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator. And it was written by his youngest son, Rich Cohen. So I found this book by accident. A few weeks ago, on episode 255, I reread the fantastic book, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King, which serves as a biography of Samuel Zemurray. And it's one of my favorite books that I've ever read for the podcast or otherwise, and so I decided, hey, let me go see if Rich Cohen has any other books that might be interesting to read for the podcast. And I found his latest book, which is the one I'm holding in my hand.