Rating: 
Summary: Best book I've read in awhile.
Review: Peter Barton may not be your model for a perfect life, he just lived his life to the fullest. Everyone should read this book and realize why they are here and what they should do with the time they have. Read it cover to cover in 4 hours, then did the same thing 2 days later. Couldn't put it down. Thanks Peter Barton and family and Laurence Shames for this story. I owe you one.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful read
Review: Peter Barton showed us what a life well lived looks like and serves as an inspiration to us all. Even in death, he was living his best life. I highly recommend this book and Optimal Thinking: How to be your best self, a superlative book which shows you how to bring your best self to every situation and make the absolute most of life.
Rating:
Summary: Peter Barton's Honest and Courageous Story
Review: Peter Barton spent his all-too-brief, brilliant life like a gambling addict let loose in a casino. He didn't taste experience --- he devoured it in great chomps and gulps of adventure, leaps in imagination, success in business ventures, and deep family commitment.He played away his early years as an anti-war hippie, experiencing to the fullest extent the joys and freedoms of the 1970s. But by the time he reached that life altering, ominous "over thirty" hurdle, he began to think seriously about his future. He took a reality check, buckled down at Harvard Business School, and projected his enormous intellectual and physical energies into the world of ideas. As a visionary on the threshold of the cable television era, Barton co-founded Liberty Media, which pioneered with the Discovery Channel, Fox Sports, The Learning Channel, Black Entertainment Television, and STARZ. Along the way to his meteoric success, Barton met and married his wife and started a family. Once he knew they were financially secure, having made some profitable stock market investments, he felt free to explore new horizons and stepped down as President of Liberty Media. Barton was about to launch a whole new career in the fledgling Internet sphere when life's ultimate reality check arrived via cell phone in the middle of a meeting with Yahoo executives in Silicon Valley. It was Barton's doctor calling from Denver. He had been ignoring a vague but persistent stomachache and had gone in for some tests. He remembers the call this way: "'I need you to come to my office to discuss this with me. You have cancer.' Just like that. That terse, that quick; that casual. I don't remember getting up, but suddenly I'm standing. The Yahoo board of directors is staring at me. Maybe they understand that something bad has happened; maybe they're just wondering what could possibly be more important than going head to head with AOL." Life is suddenly brought into sharp focus for Barton. NOT FADE AWAY is narrated by Barton in collaboration with mystery writer and novelist Laurence Shames. It is a diary, a memoir and a biography. Shames, who didn't know Barton personally but was introduced to him by a mutual friend, says that Barton's first intent was to leave something of himself for his three children, ages 14, 11 and 9. But as the relationship between the two men intensified during the last months of Barton's life, the idea behind the book grew to become much more. Shames saw the enormous humor and deep affection Barton felt for not just his family but for life, and he wanted to bring the depth of feeling that Barton was experiencing to the public --- not only his exuberance for life but his growing insights into himself as the inevitable drew near. NOT FADE AWAY isn't a sad story or one filled with angst and foreboding. It is a story that deals with love, success, friendships, business relationships, war protests, the simple joys of parenting and the simple-minded joys of college pranks. Barton jams with Sha Na Na, rock climbs at Robert Redford's Sundance Ranch, and deals craps in Vegas. He reminisces about his boyhood and relationship with his father, who also died young, and rejoices over the fact that he lived longer than him. He then writes of the self-discovery that arrives when one's mortality is brought sharply into focus. Almost reluctantly he discusses briefly the pain and encumbrances of illness, but he focuses on separating his mind from his demanding body, trying to prevent the physical wreck, which he likens to a rusted-out old car, from becoming who he really is. Barton fiercely denied to Shames early in their relationship that he was spiritual or religious. This amuses Shames, and as the process moves on, Barton's deep core of strength and belief in "something more" begins to shine through. NOT FADE AWAY deals with life at its most glorious, and the end of life at its most transcendent. Perhaps readers of this often humorous, deeply honest, adventurous and courageous story will come away feeling as columnist Dave Barry did when he said, "Sooner or later, we'll all make the journey Peter Barton took; now, thanks to him, it doesn't look so scary." --- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Rating:
Summary: Insight at the end of life
Review: Peter Barton was my son-in-law and continually surprised me by always seeing the "big" picture while I (like most of us) wallowed in the details of life. He wrote it with Laurence Shames after learning of an impending, untimely death. He was an extraodinarily creative person, always able to see the context of every situation. Life rewarded him well financially but, most of all, with an uncanny sense of where we fit in the course of our lives. This book is filled with large-scale insights, many of which will be useful to each of us. Even knowing him, I found the book a worthwhile read. I personally grew from the "read," as I'm sure you will. It may reset your values as well as your expectations regarding living. Laurence Shames is skillful not only with words but also with conveying ideas. His book reads very well.
Rating: 
Summary: A Lamentable Read
Review: Publishers Weekly has it all wrong. This is not "a beautiful book about how to live"....unless one finds beauty in waiting until one is faced with one's mortality before realizing what's important in life. This is, simply put, a book for self-absorbed, naval-gazing baby boomers in search of something to believe in, a la Tuesdays with Morrie. Barton's insights are, at best, questionable; his bromides tiresome. I'd hate to think that one of the most important bits of "wisdom" I left to my children was "to know the difference between a dumb risk and a smart one". Peter Barton's name is attached to this book, but I fear it was written by Peter Pan: someone who, in the end, still hadn't grown up. And that's the real sadness behind this story.
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Summary: Live life as though you will live forever...
Review: So rich an experience is this remarkable work that I find myself sitting back and marveling at the life that was Peter Barton. His love, his courage, his restless embrace of the nearly unimaginable reality of his all-too-early death, helps Peter speak to us about the road we have yet to travel with the confidence of a seasoned guide. This book offers the reader so much to absorb that it takes a second reading to truly appreciate the gift the reader is being given. This is a book to relish, to share, but not to relinquish. Thank you Larry Shames and Laura Barton for sharing Peter with us.
Rating:
Summary: Not Fade Away
Review: This book is a must gift to anyone you know that needs a good dose of reality and humanity. Peter's ultimate legacy is his children and his relationship with Laura - but this book gives the rest of the world who didn't know him a glimpse of what they missed...
Rating: 
Summary: A READERS DIGEST TYPE OF LIFE...CONDENSED
Review: This book is about Peter Barton and he has written half of it and the biography part is by Laurence Shames. My personal philosophy is pretty well set in stone, but for a younger person, this book should be a good primer in how to live...well. Mr. Barton tried to do many things and did do them well. His serious occupation did not develop until his early 40's (along with his marriage) and the story of how he arrived there is very interesting. He was responsible for much of what you see on cable television today and his ideas of what to look for in finding a job for yourself is enlightening. His attitude of life is superb and you should get a lot out of reading about his stairway to the stars.
Rating:
Summary: A READERS DIGEST TYPE OF LIFE...CONDENSED
Review: This book is about Peter Barton and he has written half of it and the biography part is by Laurence Shames. My personal philosophy is pretty well set in stone, but for a younger person, this book should be a good primer in how to live...well. Mr. Barton tried to do many things and did do them well. His serious occupation did not develop until his early 40's (along with his marriage) and the story of how he arrived there is very interesting. He was responsible for much of what you see on cable television today and his ideas of what to look for in finding a job for yourself is enlightening. His attitude of life is superb and you should get a lot out of reading about his stairway to the stars.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read in years. A must read!!!
Review: This book is the best book ive read in years. Great discription and funny and amusing in some places too.
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