In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together. With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. 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. 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. 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. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry. Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.īy the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr.

He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages. The greatest immigrant success story of our time. For everyone else, his Wikipedia entry ought to suffice.In his signature larger-than-life style, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is a revealing self-portrait of his illustrious, controversial, and truly unique life. Then again, as the tabloids have since revealed, he fathered an illegitimate child with the household maid. There are repeated claims of how much he respects her. There are also a number of photographs, largely variations on Schwarzenegger showing off.u00a0The only hint of warmth in his personality comes when he is describing his former wife, Maria Shriver. When he does refer to juicy gossip - his alleged groping of women, for instance - it is primarily to label it ‘untrue’ and offer half-hearted apologies for any possible bad behaviour.

The biography comes across as a long, rambling monologue, sprinkled with anecdotes featuring other famous people.

What makes things worse is the fact that his writing - and one must blame the ghost-writer for this, of course - often comes across as leaden, much like his stilted dialogue in a hundred odd action movies. Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Simon And Schuster, Rs 699

My unbelievably true life story