I think the best aspect of a good autobiography is that it can capture the voice and personality of the author, and this one does that. The "Colonel" tells quite a story, with himself as the plucky country boy made good. While it has inconsistencies and gaps that indicate a bit of exaggeration and omission, I don't hold it against him. He's charming even if a good deal of his persona is put on. Here's an example of his voice and what he says. After stating that he's begun to be profitable enough to pay himself $40,000 a year in 1959 (about $330,000 in 2016 dollars):

I also paid my employees good salaries. I paid my office staff $7,000 a year ($58,000 in 2016 dollars). Country-bred stenographers and bookkeepers who had been working for $45 ($370 in 2016 dollars) a week in their neighborhood went to work for me at $7,000 a year. I didn’t do that just because I felt like it. I’ve always believed that everybody likes to have a good wage. I got credit for paying them good wages and if Uncle Sam came along and took it away from them in taxes, it wasn’t my fault.

When talking about how he'd sold the business and taken on an advisory role he wrote:

Everybody works as a team and they think nothing of working 12 to 14 hours a day. I guess that’s my influence. I set that example. My telephone is open 24 hours a day. I’m on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every week of the month. I once worked three years without taking a single day off. We had a picnic once on the Fourth of July but I even worked during that. I don’t believe in vacations. My theory was if I could do without them two weeks out of the year, I probably didn’t need them the rest of the time.

Mr. Sanders was 66 when he decided to try to franchise his fried chicken business. On the topic of age, he wrote:

When older people ask me, “How have you been so successful after age 65?” I tell them, “Anyone who’s reached 65 years of age has had a world of experience behind him. He’s had his ups and downs and all the trials and tribulations of life. He certainly ought to be able to gather something out of that, something he can put together at the end of his 65 years so he can get a new start.” The way I see it, a man’s life is written by the way he lives it. It’s using any talent God has given him, even if his talent is cooking food or running a good motel.

You can reach higher, think bigger, grow stronger and live deeper in this country of ours than anywhere else on Earth. The rules here give everybody
a chance to win. If my story is different, it’s because my life really began at age 65 when most folks have already called it a day.

I’d been modestly successful before I hit 65. After that I made millions. When they’re about 60 or 65, a lot of people feel that life is all over for them. Too many of them just sit and wait until they die or they become a burden to other people. The truth is they can make a brand new life for themselves if they just don’t give up and hunker down. That’s one of the reasons I’ve written this book. I want to tell people, “You’re only as old as you feel or as you think, and no matter what your age there’s plenty of work to be done.” I don’t want to sound like I’m clearing my throat and giving advice about how a man can be successful. I’m not all puffed up. My main trade secret is I’m not afraid of hard, back-cracking work. After all, I was raised on a farm where hard work is the way of life.

The last third of the book is a cookbook of Southern home cooking recipes. The recipe for farm coffee was the oddest; it recommended crushing an egg "shell and all" into the grounds and pouring a cup of cold water into the brewed coffee to settle the grounds at the bottom before serving.

The one notably absent recipe is for fried chicken, though the Colonel's cooking method utilized a pressure cooker, which isn't exactly a household item. However, there are exactly 11 herbs and spices that might be used on chicken mentioned in other recipes. They are: black pepper, white pepper, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne, chili powder, allspice, parseley, sage, thyme, and dry mustard. I recently learned from another book that chemical analysis indicated that modern KFC contains no herbs or spices at all, so unfortunately his recipe is no longer available anywhere.

Terms I learned from this book:

Dun - verb, to make persistent demanding of a person, specifically regarding payment of a debt.
“Doodling ashes” - Cleaning the ash pans out of a locomotive engine (after it has finished a trip).

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