KPMG's O'Kelly Meets Death, Faux Tocqueville, Basketball: Books

KPMG's O'Kelly Meets Death, Faux Tocqueville, Basketball: Books

(The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Bloomberg.)

By Edward Nawotka

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- On May 24, 2005, Eugene O'Kelly of KPMG LLP peered at a magnetic resonance image of his brain. The picture was ``milky, with dots of varying sizes scattered all over the place,'' he later recalled.

O'Kelly was looking at cancerous tumors. At 53, the chairman and chief executive officer of the U.S. arm of accounting firm KPMG International had three months to live.

True to form, O'Kelly made an executive decision. He vowed to ``continue to live by the rules I'd followed in my business life,'' he writes at the outset of ``Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life'' (McGraw-Hill, 179 pages, $19.95). What follows is one of the most unexpected and touching books you're likely to read this year.

``Chasing Daylight'' is both a handbook on how to ``succeed at death'' and a memoir of the months leading up to O'Kelly's passing on Sept. 10, 2005. ``As head guy,'' he writes, ``I had focused on building and planning for the future. Now, I would have to learn the true value of the present.''

Two weeks after his diagnosis, O'Kelly resigned as chairman and CEO, staying on at KPMG only as a partner. Initially, he set himself the goal of living long enough to attend a partners' meeting that November. As his energy flagged, though, he began to focus on ``unwinding relationships with close lifetime friends.''

`Perfect Moments'

O'Kelly sought to create ``perfect moments'' for each to remember him by, be it a final talk or a boat ride on Lake Tahoe. He spent significant time with his wife and 14-year-old daughter.

It was a remarkable reversal for a man who had previously booked his schedule a year or more in advance. Many people talk about living in the present. O'Kelly learned how to do it.

If anyone should savor the moment, it's a player on any of the ``Final Four'' teams vying for the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I men's basketball championship.

``Most players dream of being in one Final Four,'' John Feinstein writes in ``Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four'' (Little, Brown, 370 pages, $25.95). ``Only a handful get to play in more than one.''

Feinstein's brisk book -- his 19th to date -- recounts classic Final Four moments, such as North Carolina State's upset win over Houston in the 1983 title game. Throughout, the author uses the 2005 Final Four in St. Louis as a backdrop.

Unfortunately, a reader can take only so many buzzer beaters and flagrant fouls. By the last chapter, when North Carolina defeats top-ranked Illinois to win the 2005 title, the book has become one long blur, like a highlight reel on fast forward. This book is mostly for die-hard fans of perennial Final Four teams.

Lap Dancers

American sports aren't high on the agenda of French author Bernard-Henri Levy, who crisscrossed the U.S. to write ``American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville'' (Random House, 309 pages, $24.95).

Even when Levy visits the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, he sniffs. ``This is not a museum; it's a church,'' he says.

Levy prefers to hobnob with a bewildering array of movie stars, authors and semi-celebrities, including Sharon Stone, Norman Mailer and Ron Reagan Jr. He would have done better to hang out with Joe Six Pack.

As the Frenchman careens across the country, he becomes as breathless as a blogger. He rails against America's ``heinous and grotesque fascination'' with guns. He enthuses about Seattle. Lap dancers in New Orleans, Levy says, are ``so much bolder and more cheerful than the cloned dolls in the Las Vegas clubs.''

By the end of this book, you're worn out -- as if you've sat through a slide show of out-of-focus vacation snapshots narrated by your pretentious foreign cousin.