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More than twenty years ago, the NPR correspondent Anne Garrels first visited Chelyabinsk, a gritty military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contained beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Garrels’s goal was to chart the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse by traveling to Russia’s heartland.
Returning again and again, Garrels found that the area’s new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Sushi restaurants proliferated; so did shakedowns. In the neighboring countryside, villages crumbled into the ground. Far from the glitz of Moscow, the people of Chelyabinsk were working out their country’s destiny, person by person.
In Putin Country, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists who champion the rights of orphans and disabled children, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a circle of determined Protestant evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers trying to cope with inescapable payoffs and institutionalized negligence. As Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and war in Ukraine leads to Western sanctions and a lower standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country’s direction. Through it all, Garrels sympathetically charts an ongoing identity crisis. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? What kind of pride and cohesion can it offer? Drawing on close friendships sustained over many years, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter.
Correcting the misconceptions of Putin’s supporters and critics alike, Garrels’s portrait of Russia’s silent majority is both essential and engaging reading at a time when cold war tensions are resurgent.

• Sales Rank: #18009 in Books
• Published on: 2016-03-15
• Released on: 2016-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.64" h x .92" w x 5.76" l, .80 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review

"Quiet but excellent . . . [Garrels's] clear, patient, sympathetic portraits of teachers, children, prostitutes, doctors―the whole raft of Russian humanity―provide a pointillist landscape and an understanding of the country, and its mentalities, that eludes many more overtly political books." ―The New Yorker

"A quiet masterwork . . . [Garrels] seems to have talked to everyone . . . She marshals her reporting, character after character, to build the evidence." ―Andrew Meier, Bookforum

"Although the nominal subject of Putin Country is Chelyabinsk . . . the book’s deeper and more revelatory theme is that of the Russian wily man . . . There is little remarkable about the place, though that is also what makes the book worthwhile . . . The search for a post-Soviet ideology has, in Chelyabinsk and across Russia, led to a strange mishmash, at once faithful and mystical, distrustful and fatalistic." ―Joshua Yaffa, The Wall Street Journal

"Deeply informative . . . [Garrels] directs her considerable energy to people, not policy, and her readers are the better for it . . . With the clear eye of a good reporter, she could sometimes see dramatic improvements―and at other times, disappointing setbacks. She made many friends and, through her, so do we." ―Marvin Kalb, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

"Fluent in Russian, Garrels has needed no translator and developed over the years many connections in the region. She tries to be hopeful, but for her fellow Russophiles (I count myself one), Putin Country is devastating . . . Garrels keeps her cool and listens quietly as she gathers locals’ narratives and opinions, no matter how disturbing . . . Two of the best chapters, “The Taxi Driver” and “The Forensic Expert,” are like nonfictional short stories, wherein we become familiar with the long arcs of the protagonists’ tumultuous lives." ―Bob Blaisdell, The Christian Science Monitor

"If you want to understand Putin’s Russia, read this book. Anne Garrels burrows deep into the heartland and enlists a diverse cast of authentic Russians to show why Putin happened, how he remains popular, and what might threaten his hold on power." ―Bill Keller, editor in chief of The Marshall Project

"More than twenty years ago, Anne Garrels began visiting the formerly ‘secret’ city of Chelyabinsk, closed to foreigners because of its military and industrial installations. Like the miners in that long-suffering city, she dug deep into the lives of the people and she kept going back to talk with them, charting their evolution from Soviet citizens to citizens of a new Russia. With great journalistic skill, Garrels helps us understand the complex emotions of people still in transition, trying to define what it means to be Russian." ―Jill Dougherty, former CNN foreign affairs correspondent

"Putin Country is brilliant storytelling. Save yourself a trip to Chelyabinsk―Anne Garrels gives you the grime and glitz, the hangovers and heartbreak, of today’s Russia, and all without a visa!" ―Stephen Sestanovich, author of Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama and U.S. ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union, 1997–2001

"Anne Garrels’s gripping account of people in Russia’s heartland is a fascinating book. It shows us a different Russia from the one most observers see in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is essential reading for those who wish to understand Putin’s Russia." ―Jack F. Matlock, Jr., author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended and U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987–1991

"A critical and crucial study of a country with which America has always had a volatile connection, Garrels’s essays cover vital ground and are essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the myriad issues that inform U.S.-Russian relations." ―Carol Haggas, Booklist (starred)

"Former NPR foreign correspondent Garrels offers finely delineated, meticulously researched dispatches from a region in Russia that seemed to her both typical of a certain Russian provincialism and arbitrarily chosen: Chelyabinsk, on the southern edge of the Ural Mountains . . . In essence, Garrels shows how the gloomy sense of ‘Russian fatalism’ poisons all aspects of society. A collection of scrupulous, timely journalistic portraits." ―Kirkus Reviews

"While Garrels takes pain to include voices willing to condemn Putin’s administration in her exposé, most of the interviewees are either unaware of, or willfully blind to, the worst of their government. This book persuasively asserts that too little has changed in Russia since the days of the Soviet Union." ―Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Anne Garrels is a former foreign correspondent for NPR and the author of Naked in Baghdad. She was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women's Media Foundation in 2003 and the George Polk Award for Radio Reporting in 2004.

Most helpful customer reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Like Chelyabinsk, where this story takes place
By Foriegn Devil
This was especially interesting for me since I lived and worked in rural Russia from 1992 - 1995. Like Chelyabinsk, where this story takes place, I was in a "closed village" in the far north, inside the Arctic Circle. I could definitely identify with many of the characters in this book, and felt like I knew many of them personally. This book will hold many surprises for most American readers regarding the Russians' attitudes toward Putin and his brand of governing. I am a strong believer that democracy is not necessarily the right form of government for all countries, and Russia could not survive if they had an American style democracy. They need a "strong man" in charge or they are completely lost. This is an excellent read and gives some great insight into many aspects of daily life in rural Russia, and how the people there think.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Solves Much of the Riddle, a Brilliant Book
By Don R. Hamilton
This is a brilliant book. I have read hundreds of books, papers and articles that attempt to give the reader insight into on society or another. I recall no other account, that so gave me a feel for the heart of a country, the heart of a people.

Ms. Garrels shows us much of Russia, humanizing a distant, murky and menacing place. The drug addicts, scientists, mayors, social workers and all the rest mostly speak for themselves, but the author is not afraid to frame someone's statement with historical context or offer a tart or sympathetic personal observation. As an American Foreign Service Officer (career diplomat), I lived in eight countries. I wish I could have read a book like *Putin Country* about each of them before I got there.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Anne Garrels immersed herself into the culture and lives of ...
By tomthegardener
Anne Garrels immersed herself into the culture and lives of people who became her friends in Cheylabinsk. It is different than what I saw on my visits last month to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The lives of the average Russian citizen is difficult and grim. They are undergoing some positive changes and we can only hope and pray that a more positive direction can be found.

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^^ Ebook Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence, by Elizabeth Bishop

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I sort of see you surrounded with fine-tooth combs, sandpaper, nail files, pots of varnish, etc.―with heaps of used commas and semicolons handy, and little useless phrases taken out of their contexts and dying all over the floor," Elizabeth Bishop said upon learning a friend landed a job at The New Yorker in the early 1950s. From 1933 until her death in 1979, Bishop published the vast majority of her poems in the magazine's pages. During those forty years, hundreds of letters passed between Bishop and her editors, Charles Pearce, Katharine White, and Howard Moss. In these letters Bishop discussed the ideas and inspiration for her poems and shared news about her travels, while her editors offered support, commentary, and friendship. Their correspondence provides an unparalleled look into Bishop's writing process, the relationship between a poet and her editors, the internal workings of The New Yorker, and the process of publishing a poem, giving us a rare glimpse into the artistic development of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

• Sales Rank: #1708256 in Books
• Published on: 2011-02-01
• Released on: 2011-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.25" w x 6.00" l, 1.74 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This superbly edited collection traces the correspondence between poet Bishop and her editors at the New Yorker--Katharine S. White (wife of E.B. White) and Howard Moss--from 1934 to 1979. Many of Bishop's finest poems were first published in the New Yorker. These were the days of manual typewriters, carbon copies, and Varitype working proofs. The letters often capture the back and forth from editor and publisher to writer concentrating on the nitty-gritty of punctuation and word choice. "Punctuation is my Waterloo," Bishop bemoans. The "real world" rarely intrudes, for example, a fleeting reference to the 1960 presidential campaign. When White departs as poetry-and-fiction editor in 1956, taking her warm and chatty approach with her, Bishop's initial disappointment is clear. Over time she warms up to Howard Moss and vice versa, even to the point of his eventual purchase of her cherished clavichord. He pleads: "Please send some poems!" This is a fascinating, placid, and inevitably repetitious correspondence that ought to be assigned to all aspiring editors of poetry. (Illus. not seen) (Feb.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review

“[Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker] offers a glimpse into Bishop's life (she lived in Brazil for much of this period), writing process and relationship with her editors, as well as a look into the internal workings of that fabled publication in which so many of her poems were published … As with the best correspondence, it is like eavesdropping on a lively conversation already in progress.” ―The Globe and Mail

“Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker collects nearly forty years of letters between Bishop and the magazine, largely a correspondence with two of Bishop's formidable editors, Katherine White and Howard Moss. It was more than a partnership. In letters to Moss and White over the years, her valedictions warmed from ‘Sincerely' to ‘Affectionately' to ‘Love' … This collection is most interesting as a record of how Bishop and her editors mulled over questions of style, clarity, and accuracy--and as a keyhole through The New Yorker's legendary doors. Sometimes Bishop's submissions provoked charmingly cordial editorial notes. Her story ‘In the Village' mentions a child's fascination with ‘steaming cow flops'; as White put it, ‘the loving description of manure seems to go too far.'” ―Jeremy Axelrod, Columbia Journalism Review

“True, you're reading a lot of the nuts and bolts of Bishop's relationship with her New Yorker editors [Katherine] White and then Howard Moss--the work accepted and rejected, checks sent, detailed changes. You're also following a narrative line about Bishop the writer and the changing literary climate of the New Yorker. Fascinating.” ―Jeff Simon, Buffalo News

“Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker, ably introduced by the poet Joelle Biele, charts her relationship with the first publisher of most of her best poems … Although much of this correspondence is about punctuation … postal delays or illness … there is also regular disagreement about how "coarse she is allowed to be in [The New Yorker's] genteel pages. She broke off contact with the magazine in 1961, stung perhaps by its rejection of poems such as her discreetly lesbian love poem The Shampoo, a rejection that has come to seem more significant because Bishop subsequently avoided publishing poems that dealt explicitly with sexuality. [The collection] shed[s] light on the arc of Bishop's development as a poet, and implicitly grants us a sense of the limits that hemmed in gay writers in the middle of the last century.” ―John McAuliffe, The Irish Times

“Bishop's long and affectionate relationship with the magazine is thoroughly documented in Elizabeth Bishop and the New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence … Poets and NewYorker aficionados will find it irresistible … Reading this volume, noting the meticulous attention brought to each poem and story, one realizes how skillfully the editors helped focus and clarify every detail of the text … as these letters so copiously prove, the editors never tried to change the author's intentions, even in the smallest matters, only to realize them. For a woman without a fixed home or even country, The New Yorker provided a sense of stability and continuity. It adopted her early and gave the consistent support that allowed her to develop her idiosyncratic talents into genius.” ―Dana Gioia, The Wall Street Journal

“The letters of … Elizabeth Bishop, written to The New Yorker where she published a great deal of her work, offers an exhilarating glimpse into the poet's thinking about her own work … and the background for much its creation, which views she shared with her editors.” ―Michael Coffey, Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–79) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Most helpful customer reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Inspiring
By Deb Oestreicher
This beautiful book offers a rare peek at the give-and-take between a great poet and her (also great) editors. I really got a feeling for these lives (mainly Elizabeth Bishop, Katherine White, and Howard Moss) as if through a side window. The letters also drove me straight back to Elizabeth Bishop's poems--which not only stand up to the test of time, but which seem even better than when I first read them (WRITE IT!) more than 25 years ago. They may yet send me back to Howard Moss and EB White as well. Inspiring.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
great record of warm relationship between EB and The New Yorker
By 50 years old
This is an excellent book. It shows the reader how The New Yorker edited the poetry that was being submitted by Elizabeth Bishop. It also shows the warm and caring relationship Elizabeth Bishop had with the editors of that magazine and the gradual intimacy that was being established between Katherine White, Howard Moss and Bishop in the warm letters being sent back and forth. The introduction is good too because it sets the context of what The New Yorker was like in the middle twentieth century.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
EB and the New Yorker
By Amy Lowell
Love anything about Elizabeth Bishop. This deals with her correspondence and involment with magazine. Rather try stuff, but as usual EB, can come across even in her business dealings. I would not recommend this as a causal read on Bishop. However if you are writing on her, this would be a must to look at.

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^ Fee Download A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944, by Willy Peter Reese

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A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War, Russia 1941-44 is the haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead. Bearing witness to--and participating in--the atrocities of war, Reese recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an intelligent, touching, and illuminating perspective on life on the eastern front. He documented the carnage perpetrated by both sides, the destruction which was exacerbated by the young soldiers' hunger, frostbite, exhaustion, and their daily struggle to survive. And he wrestled with his own sins, with the realization that what he and his fellow soldiers had done to civilians and enemies alike was unforgivable, with his growing awareness of the Nazi policies toward Jews, and with his deep disillusionment with himself and his fellow men.

An international sensation, A Stranger to Myself is an unforgettable account of men at war.

• Sales Rank: #484790 in Books
• Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Published on: 2005-11-02
• Released on: 2005-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .82" w x 5.76" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• Great product!

From Publishers Weekly
Sometimes lyrical, this memoir by a German youth who miraculously survived four tours of duty on the Russian front during WWII—he died on his fifth deployment—is a significant historical document. It is also a laborious and overwrought cacophony of Wagnerian proportions. Reese, who was a 20-year-old bank clerk in 1939 when he was first drafted, inhabits many different worlds, all of them conflicting. Despite Schmitz's assertion that Reese was "no Nazi," he was, like the vast majority of German youths of the time, deeply imbued with Nazi ideology and experienced the war as a sort of sacrament. Duty, abdication and heroism are just some of his motifs. Reese sees himself as a poet deciphering the human condition, but mostly he is just a soldier who plays his part in the atrocities—often exuberantly. He laughs with the other members of his platoon at the spectacle of Russian partisans hanging by the neck—"yellow-brown ichor dribbled out of their eyes and crusted on their cheeks"—and makes Russian women dance naked. Despite its long-winded homilies and repetitiveness, this stark testimony provides new insights into both the ravages of Nazi indoctrination and the bloodiest military campaign in history. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* The brutality of battle is vividly rendered in this harrowing memoir from Reese, a German soldier who served on the Russian front during World War II. Killed in combat at the age of 23, Reese left behind a diary documenting the atrocities of war and his growing disillusionment with the attitudes of his fellow countrymen. (Reese was no Nazi, writes editor Schmitz in the book's preface, in which he first recalls reading the blistering manuscript inherited by Reese's cousin.) The late soldier's meditations are by turns poetic and macabre; he reflects on the literature of Tolstoy and Baudelaire_and dramatic clashes drenched in blood. War both robs Reese of his soul and imbues his life with a sense of purpose, leaving him feeling like "a stranger to myself." His prose resonates with images of a bitter, corpse-strewn Russian landscape, where it's only a matter of time before a young man's heart turns to stone. One soldier, unable to find his felt boots, chops off the frozen legs of a dead Red Army soldier. "He bundled the two stumps under his arm and set them down in the oven, next to our lunch," writes Reese. "By the time the potatoes were done, the legs were thawed out, and he pulled on the bloody felt boots." Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This book [is] a revelation. And--where historical witness is threatened with disappearance, or has already disappeared--an enrichment."--Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger

Most helpful customer reviews

135 of 143 people found the following review helpful.
"We are war. Because we are soldiers
By Lonya
I have burned all the cities, strangled all the women, brained all the children, plundered all the land. I have shot a million enemies, laid waste the fields, destroyed the churches, ravaged the souls of the inhabitants, spilled the blood and tears of all the mothers. I did it, all me. I did nothing. But I was a soldier."

Thus begins Willy Peter Reese's "A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944. Winston Churchill may have said that history is written by the victors, but the recent discovery and publication of these memoirs provides some evidence that history's `losers' sometimes also have a chance to contribute. A Stranger to Myself is a valuable addition to our collective memory.

Willy Peter Reese was a recent high school graduate and a trainee bank clerk when he was drafted into the German army in the spring of 1941. The German invasion of the USSR, Operation Barbarossa, began during Reese's basic training. Like many of his fellow soldiers, Reese thought he would be home by Christmas. Reese was quickly disabused of this notion once he found himself in the middle of what may be the most brutal fighting in the history of humanity (or inhumanity). Not only was the war on the eastern front fought between armies but it was a war in which brutality was inflicted on the civilian population on an unprecedented scale. In addition to the Holocaust inflicted on the Jews of Poland, the Ukraine, and Belarus, millions of other Poles, Ukrainians, and Russian civilians lost their lives through hunger or murder, along with millions of Red Army and German prisoners. As noted so aptly in the Preface, Reese found himself in the "greatest abattoir in human history".

This memoir emerged in 2002 and represents the reflection of Reese on life in the abattoir. Reese kept a diary during his time as a soldier. He'd set out his thoughts on every scrap of paper he could find. He would write during lulls in the horror or sitting in an army field hospital after being wounded. He wrote long letters home to his mother and father. Sent home in late 1943 after being wounded, Reese took his diary and those letters home and turned it into a manuscript. He left his manuscript with his mother and returned to the front. He was killed in 1944. His mother kept all his documents as a shrine to her dead son. A Stranger to Myself was published in Germany in 2002 and has now been translated (very capably by Michael Hoffman) into English.

Reese was well-read and considered himself a poet. As such these memoirs are unusual for its florid prose. The writing is not terse but extravagant in its description of Reese' desperate mood swings during his time on the front. However, the ornate prose, which would seem utterly pretentious in a piece of fiction, serves as a stark and compelling contradiction to the horrors that Reese writes about. Reese does not spare himself. He is brutally honest about the loss of his soul, his absorption with the efficiency of killing and his own mistreatment of the civilian population. It may be asserted that Reese did not mention the Holocaust or go into any great detail about the atrocities he saw committed and perhaps committed himself during his time on the front. That is a fair enough comment to be sure. However, after reading this book it is clear to me that Reese's focus was not war on the grand scale but on the war and its effect on him. These are internal, not external reflections. He, like virtually ever other soldier, was concerned first and foremost with his own or her own survival. The big picture is for other people to draw. Looking at it through that lens, Reese's memoirs are frank and brutally honest. He does not praise the war and in fact finds it irrational and unforgivable that his country waged it. Yet at the same time he has no aversion to participating in the fighting and the drinking and the looting that takes place. He displays a certain arrogance towards the people whose land he helps occupy. He wrestles with his demons and lays it out for the reader. Anyone who has seen this horror cannot believe in God he writes, yet he cannot help but think that the sins he and his comrades commit are unforgivable. We see him sink to a depth where it seems there is no turning back, where he stands up from his slit trench in order to be shot by Soviet snipers, only to see his spirits revive a bit when he gets a days rest or finds a bit of food to eat.

Reese's story is an important one for many reasons. It makes for compelling reading and it will have an impact on the reader that will linger after the book is read and put back on the shelf.

L. Fleisig

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Terror, boredom, revulsion, obedience...life as cannon fodder.
By S. Potter
A remarkable book which left a deep impression on me. At once literary in style and harrowing in its descriptions of life as cannon fodder, albeit thinking, passionate, feeling cannon fodder.

Willy Peter Reese was no hero. I am not even sure he was brave. However, as a good German boy he did his duty to the fatherland. First he trained to put on the "mask" of the soldier. Then he went of to war in Russia, mask in place.

He passed through a land where atrocities were the reality. He pillaged food from the starving. During the German Army's massive, fighting retreat Reese's unit was always among the last to get the order to fall back. His young eyes took in the full terror of the Nazi's scorched earth terror tactics. And he was part of it.

Along with his comrades, he routinely drank himself into some other world. When there was no other way to move it, he and his fellow soldiers relentlessly dragged the unit's artillery piece. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

All the while, his young mind processed what he witnessed. Temperatures so cold he could only cry. A body infested with parasites. Legs and feet with open oozing wounds. Taking shelter in hand dug hovels. Corpses hanging from trees, lying in ditches, everywhere. In between the bouts of horror and killing, however, were sights of beauty and moments of mental and spiritual clarity. His writing only stopped when his life ended.

Yes, Reese was trying to write like a writer. His loves were Rilke and others of that ilk. His book though, must be taken as a whole. To dissect it, to say this part is too wordy or that part is too introspective, is to miss the point. No, Willy Peter Reese was not a hero. He did his duty as he saw it. He tried to stay alive. He was not brave. Surely, then, he was the typical German male of the day who was thrust into a situation over which he had no control. He did not rage against his lot nor did he relish it. He simply existed through it as best he could.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating read
By Mathew A. Shember
I stumbled on this book why visiting some sites about Stalingrad. It was mentioned by a couple posters so I decided to give it a read. I was not disappointed.

This is not a book looking for hard facts about places and people. It's the writings of a man coming to terms with war and how it changed him.

There is a great deal where the author goes into vivid descriptions about feelings, memories, and impressions of his surroundings. This could annoy some people.

Do not look for detailed descriptions of tactics and strategy.

What makes this book interesting is the contrast of hope and despair. The prose that starts a chapter changes to despair over time. There are ample descriptions of soldiers abusing people, looting, and drinking. Reese tells of his own actions and in the end drinks heavily. He even decided to get himself killed or wounded by standing up from a trench.

There is no propaganda in the book. He does not preach the glory of Hitler. Yet, he also doesn't mention other things such as the holocaust. There is even a reference to a friend in Auschwitz.

Towards the end of the book I got the impression he decided to die in Russia. There isn't anything obvious to state this idea. It's just how it read to me.

There are photos in the book ranging from his early days, joining the army and even a Red Cross report telling where it is thought that Reese died.

It is a good thing this book was published. The mother held his writings till she died. One aspect that is useful is that it goes contrary to a belief that the German army was clean in it's actions in Russia. I have read more then a few comments from people that argue the Germans were noble while the Russians were savage.

Probably the most prophetic comment was the end of the book:

"The war went on. Once more I went out there. I loved life."

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> Free Ebook Natural, by Bernard Malamud

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THE NATURAL by Bernard Malamud, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1952, First Edition, BOOK CLUB Edition, NEAR FINE/ VERY GOOD. This is a Collectible, Hardcover Book and Dust Jacket. The book is tight with clean, crisp pages. The book has a very slight slant. It is black cloth over boards with gold lettering on the spine. The dust jacket has a tiny tear at the top of the rear cover and shows light shelf wear.

• Sales Rank: #2145340 in Books
• Published on: 1961
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover

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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
This book might have been regarded well mid century, ...
By Julia C. Jennings
This book might have been regarded well mid century, when it was written, but the writing form does not translate well to today. If this book was written today, I doubt if anyone would publish it.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
The SUPER-Natural
By A reader
This book ought to be titled "The Super-Natural," rather than "The Natural," since there are so many mythic and magical elements to it, in both style and content. Forget about any comparisons to the feel-good/and-they-lived-happily-ever-after movie starring Robert Redford. Don't get me wrong--I loved the movie, but still, Malamud must have been tearing his hair over what Hollywood did to his dark, tragic fable of thwarted human ambition, greed and lust.
Even the main character's name, Hobbs, seems symbolic, or at least allusive: Hobbes (slightly different spelling) was a pessimistic philosopher who saw human life as a pitiless struggle for survival. Some reviewers have seen parallels with the King Arthur legend, but the novel isn't a contemporary retelling of that story. Malamud employs elements of the legend to give his own story a deeper, mythic resonance.
What this book ISN'T is a simplistic baseball novel, with a clean-cut hero overcoming adversities and becoming a winner in the end. As a reader you want to like Roy Hobbs, want to see him succeed, but Malamud keeps shoving a stick into his spokes. (Or maybe into his spikes.) His character is a man of unhealthy appetites. Roy's ambition to be "the best that ever was" in baseball is utterly self-centered and he's unable to see beyond it to any higher goal in life. His relationships with women are clumsy and coarse, and his fleeting visions of domestic happiness dimmed by lust and a tendency to want the wrong women for all the wrong reasons. Even his relationship with food is problematic. Toward the end of the novel he becomes the personification of the vice of Gluttony, stuffing himself to the point where he nearly causes his stomach to explode and he winds up in the hospital.
Without giving anything away, I think it's fair to say the book has a dark finale. This grim novel ends with an allusion to the Black Sox scandal--a newsboy begging Roy to "say it ain't true"--and Malamud offers a final line that sounds less like the King Arthur legend than like something from ancient Greek drama in its image of ruined hopes and tragic futility: "he lifted his hands to his face and wept many bitter tears."
Beats me how anyone can describe this brilliant, unforgetable but relentlessly bleak book as inspirational or uplifting. They must be confusing the novel with the movie.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Four Stars
By Chris
Good book!

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! Ebook Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives, by Sunil Khilnani

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An entertaining and provocative account of India’s past, written by one of the country’s leading thinkers

For all of India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, recapturing the human dimension of how the world's largest democracy came to be. His trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, film stars, and corporate titans--some famous, some unjustly forgotten--bring feeling, wry humor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own. As he journeys across the country and through its past, Khilnani uncovers more than just history. In rocket launches and ayurvedic call centers, in slum temples and Bollywood studios, in California communes and grimy ports, he examines the continued, and often surprising, relevance of the men and women who have made India--and the world--what it is. We encounter the Buddha, “the first human personality”; the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today; the wit and guile of India’s Machiavelli; and the medieval poets who mocked rituals and caste. In the twentieth century, Khilnani sets Gandhi and other political icons of the independence era next to actresses, photographers, and entrepreneurs. Incarnations is an ideal introduction to India--and a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of its history.

• Sales Rank: #19493 in Books
• Published on: 2016-09-20
• Released on: 2016-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.34" h x 1.50" w x 6.40" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Review

"Beautifully written with both scholarship and an enviably light touch, thoughtfully constructed and enviably erudite in its wide-ranging references, and as much at ease discussing higher mathematics and philosophy as politics and art, Incarnations is a major work by one of India’s most impressive minds, and the best possible introduction to both the complexities and the charms of Indian history." ―William Dalrymple, The Guardian

"Incisive and elegantly written . . . A work of distinction." ―John Keay, The Times Literary Supplement

"Revelatory, bold and contemplative . . . Scholarly and accessible, lively and deeply serious . . . Is this simply cashing in on the idea behind the blockbuster A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor? Can anyone ever match the erudition and verve of the erstwhile director of the British Museum? Yes and yes. And though this may be heretical, at times Khilnani may even have surpassed him." ―The Independent

"A tour de force of intellectual history, engagingly written." ―Financial Times

"Khilnani is a rare blend of scholar and cracking travel writer . . . This exceptional book serves as a further reminder of India's great strengths." ―Sunday Times (UK)

"It is hard to think of this mammoth task being executed any better. Even those who know Indian history well will be introduced to figures they did not know―and discover new things about familiar figures." ―The Telegraph

"Fuelled by a quiet, relentless curiosity and an extraordinary ability to capture the sweep of history. Incarnations is an essential, and timely, read . . . It is also an exceptionally liberating intellectual journey to take. Mr. Khilnani's prose is light and fast-paced . . . the solid labour of travel, research and meetings with other scholars as well as interviewees builds a stronger foundation for Incarnations than most non-fiction books about India can claim. And a more entertaining one than most, too." ―Business Standard

"This is a terrific book. Each biography runs into 10-13 pages, and though the prose is deceptively easy, you probably want to take your time as you savour the book, perhaps reading a piece daily. Or even reading and rereading it in this fashion for a long time to come. I know I will be placing a copy with each of my children so that they may know, in these anxiety-inducing times, what it truly means to be Indian." ―Mint (India)

"Khilnani’s choices are spirited, relevant, and aimed to provoke 'pressing contemporary questions' . . . immensely readable." ―Kirkus Reviews

"An idiosyncratic and lively journey across 2,500 years of Indian history, offering bite-size essays on the lives of 50 exemplary figures whose achievements and afterlives have influenced contemporary Indian identity . . . Khilnani’s essays are provocative and serious, a worthy rebuttal to the image of Indian history as 'curiously unpeopled.'" ―Publishers Weekly

"How does one capture the multifaceted complexities of a country like India? Historian Khilnani presents a novel approach: weave a tapestry of 50 figures from the country’s rich and ancient history that serves not only as an innovative introduction to the world’s largest democracy but also a gauge to evaluate how that past informs the present . . . The well-researched yet short chapters cover a lot of ground with ease, and Khilnani succeeds in achieving his goal of emphasizing the continued relevance of history." ―Poornima Apte, Booklist

About the Author
Sunil Khilnani is the author of the acclaimed and influential The Idea of India (FSG, 1998). He is currently the Avantha Professor and Director of the India Institute at King's College London.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Nice read to know our history..
By Agni
A thoughtful compilation of personalities who made an impact on India and outside over 2,500 years. It is a nice way to present the impact they made rather than their life stories which are well known. The author has also chosen a few lesser known persons, who nevertheless left a big impact on the nation.

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Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.

• Sales Rank: #687085 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.56" h x 1.12" w x 5.80" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• Jonathan Franzen. Signed.

Amazon.com Review
Jonathan Franzen is smart and brash, the kind of person you want as your social critic but not as a brother-in-law. Many of the 14 essays in How to Be Alone, by the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Corrections, first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere. A long, much-discussed rumination on the American novel, (newly) titled "Why Bother?," is included, as well as essays on privacy obsession, the U.S. post office, New York City, big tobacco, and new prisons. At his best, as in "My Father's Brain," a piece on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, Franzen can make the ordinary world utterly riveting. But at times, it can be difficult to discern where Franzen stands on any particular subject, as he often takes both sides of an argument. Valid attempts to reflect ambiguity s! ometimes lead to obfuscation, especially in his essays on privacy and tobacco, although his belief that small-town America of years gone by offered the individual little privacy certainly rings true. Franzen can write with panache, as in this comment after he watched, without headphones, a TV show during a flight: "(It) became an exposé of the hydraulics of insincere smiles." A few of the shorter pieces appear to be filler. Franzen shines brightest when he gets edgy and a little angry, as in "The Reader in Exile": "Instead of Manassas battlefield, a historical theme park. Instead of organizing narratives, a map of the world as complex as the world itself. Instead of a soul, membership in a crowd. Instead of wisdom, data." --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca

From Publishers Weekly
Bestselling and National Book Award- winning novelist Franzen (The Corrections) urges readers to say no to drugs, but not the pharmaceutical kind; his opiates are those "technology offers in the form of TV, pop culture, and endless gadgetry," soporifics that "are addictive and in the long run only make society's problems worse." Franzen's just as hard on intellectual conformity-on academe's canonization of third-rate but politically correct novels, for example. As a serious artist, he knows that the deck is stacked against him; after all, a great novel is a kind of antiproduct, one that is "inexpensive, infinitely reusable, and, worst of all, unimprovable." The problem, he says, is that instead of being allowed to enjoy our solitary uniqueness we are all being turned into one gigantic corporate-created entity, a point Franzen makes tellingly when he says that while a black lesbian New Yorker and a Southern Baptist Georgian might appear totally different, the truth is that both "watch Letterman every night, both are struggling to find health insurance... both play Lotto, both dream of fifteen minutes of fame, both are taking a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and both have a guilty crush on Uma Thurman." These canny, well-researched essays (which have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and elsewhere) range over a variety of subjects, from the antiquated and bizarrely inefficient Chicago postal system to the bizarrely efficient new privatized federal prisons, but they are united by a single passionate insistence that, in a cookie-cutter world, people who want simply to be themselves should have the right to do so.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this collection of 12 essays, Franzen, the author of the most-written-about novel of 2001, The Corrections, focuses on the growing commercialism and alienation in postmodern America. Presenting a number of variations on that theme, he addresses such personal topics as his smoking habit, an interview for the Oprah show, and his father's battle with Alzheimer's, a poignant account of the disease's impact on his family. In addition, pieces on the shortcomings of the Chicago post office, the supermax prison in Colorado, and the isolating effects of an increasingly computerized society show Franzen's skill as a journalist and social critic. Also included is "Why Bother?," a revision of his 1996 critique of the American novel. He has cut this version considerably and softened its strident tone, although, as he points out, "there's still plenty to be mad and scared about." This book will appeal to serious readers who appreciate penetrating yet entertaining social commentary. Enthusiastically recommended for public and academic libraries. Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Franzen does not write as a sociologist. He is not data driven in his analysis.
By Bikerguy
As a group these essays address the consumer-oriented, materialistic conformist culture in America.However, he addresses these issues from a humanist and writerly perspective. Franzen does not write as a sociologist. He is not data driven in his analysis - more the philosopher king like his friend David Eggers.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Cool book of Essays
By harrison
Amazing collection of essays. I enjoyed these essays thoroughly! Especially the essays on books, I.e, "the reader in exile" and "mr. Difficult". Also, why bother?, his Harper's essay. I would highly recommend this book! :)

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Meh
By Nashville Nancy
Good in parts, really boring in a lot of the book. If you can get past the first essay, you'll find some good sections such as the essay on the prison.

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** Ebook Free The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon

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Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with the neighborhood kids, resentment of his younger sister, and trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father. Here, a young man's life is about poking at the pretensions of the city's elders with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism. And then, his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war breaks out in Sarajevo and the city comes under siege, no way to return home; his parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo with the family dog, leaving behind all else they had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life, his own family, in this new city.

And yet this is not really a memoir. The Book of My Lives, Hemon's first book of nonfiction, defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it is a heartbreaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out and play soccer―and not for the exercise. It is a book driven by passions but built on fierce intelligence, devastating experience, and sharp insight. And like the best narratives, it is a book that will leave you a different reader―a different person, with a new way of looking at the world―when you've finished. For fans of Hemon's fiction, The Book of My Lives is simply indispensable; for the uninitiated, it is the perfect introduction to one of the great writers of our time.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

• Sales Rank: #230801 in Books
• Published on: 2013-03-19
• Released on: 2013-03-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.65" h x .81" w x 6.28" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Booklist
MacArthur fellow Hemon’s potent fiction (Love and Obstacles, 2009) is seeded with autobiographical elements now brought forward in his first book of nonfiction. In revised versions of essays first published in Granta and the New Yorker, Hemon chronicles with defining intensity, rueful self-critique, and piquant humor indelible revelations personal, cultural, and political. He is passionate about his hometown, Sarajevo, which he ardently explored and wrote about as a young militant journalist, to the point of realizing “that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority.” This made his exile in the U.S. after war broke out in his homeland while he was away all the more excruciating. In his incisive, masterfully crafted, and complexly affecting family stories; Sarajevo exploits, including the party-performance piece that led to a 13-hour interrogation at State Security; tales of remapping the “geography of the soul” in Chicago, his adopted home; and his staggering chronicle of his daughter’s tragic death, Hemon writes with deft force, piercing observation, and commanding candor about the individual’s place within life’s web and the horrors and beauty of the human condition. --Donna Seaman

Review

“Aleksandar Hemon is, quite frankly, the greatest writer of our generation. His literature is deep, agile, funny, graceful, searing, angry, raw, questioning. The Book of My Lives is worth it simply for the dedication: ‘For Isabel, forever breathing on my chest.' He writes it, and so she breathes on ours too. Such is the function of storytelling: to get to the essence of that which might eventually break our hearts. This is a book--like all of Aleksandar Hemon's books--that is an aria for our times. I will cherish it.” ―Colum McCann

“Incandescent. When your eyes close, the power of Aleksandar Hemon's colossal talent remains.” ―Junot Díaz

“Aleksandar Hemon's work crackles with so much humor and irony, so much compassion and humanity, that The Book of My Lives's true calling almost goes by unnoticed: it is, without doubt, the most necessary, intimate, and heartbreaking portrait of a world lost to one of history's darkest conflicts.” ―Téa Obreht

“I'm not quite sure Aleksandar Hemon counts as an American writer, but he is one of my favorite American writers. Before The Book of My Lives, I never really thought of him as a nonfiction person, but this new book--a memoir in essays--has some of his best writing. When Hemon's work is funny, it can make you laugh in spite of everything, and when it is sad, it's hard to stand up afterward.” ―John Jeremiah Sullivan

“The Book of My Lives is written with the full force of humanity. It will make you think, laugh, cry, and remember yourself. If you've never read Aleksandar Hemon, prepare to have your worldview deepened.” ―Jonathan Safran Foer

“You should read Aleksandar Hemon's memoir for the same reason you should read his fiction: He is not only a remarkably talented writer but also one of the great social observers, a cultural anthropologist who seems at home everywhere and nowhere and who balances despair with hope, anger with humor.” ―Benjamin Percy, National Public Radio

“One of the best prose stylists--in any language--at work today . . . and this collection is a compelling argument for his emergence as a vitally important writer.” ―Edward Hart, Kansas City Star

“A tour de force.” ―Megan O'Grady, Vogue

“The writing is gorgeous, the ending unexpected . . . I was left wanting more.” ―Ken Armstrong, The Seattle Times

“Elegant and funny . . . Acutely observed, deeply felt.” ―Ann Levin, Newsday

“Hemon has a dazzling gift for observation.” ―Chris Wallace, The Daily Beast

“Unforgettable.” ―Jesse Dorris, Time

“Powerful . . . Engaging . . . Hemon invites readers to savor both his émigré triumphs and his émigré pain--an invitation worth seizing.” ―Julia M. Klein, Chicago Tribune

“Acute meditations on exile and otherness, and the redeeming power of language.” ―The Economist

“Wise and entrancing.” ―Lucas Wittmann, Newsweek

“Hemon is engaging and interesting company, and the story of his life--or lives--is one worth telling.” ―Lisa Weidenfeld, The Christian Science Monitor

About the Author
Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, The Lazarus Project, and Love and Obstacles. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, and, most recently, a 2012 USA Fellowship. He lives in Chicago.

Most helpful customer reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
My Life and Welcome to It
By Taylor McNeil
Memoirs are tricky things: too much detail, and they are clearly fictional; too little detail, and it's dry and uninteresting. Aleksander Hemon takes the middle path with The Book of My Lives, and in episodic chapters, we see his life (and loves) from many different vantage points. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo, when it was still socialist Yugoslavia, its rotting edifice starting to crumble. War arrives in the early 1990s, and this conflict that passed me by as a series of newspaper headlines becomes real and menacing--a nasty little war among people much like us. Not that Hemon was there for most of it: he lucked out with a U.S. government sinecure as a visiting writer in Chicago just before Sarajevo came under siege. But he reports on the trapped lives of family and friends--not to mention some of the madmen leading the charge--making it all too real.

In Chicago, an instant exile, another of his lives begins, that of the impoverished refugee in the big frozen city. But this Bosnian quickly excels at English and hunkers down, walking the streets (in addition to his wanderings as a Greenpeace fundraiser) and finding his niche and his neighborhood (and his butcher). He stumbles upon a weekly refugee soccer game--the players are called their countries of origin, and Bosnia, as he's known, shows us a shadow society few of us see, but which exists in every large city.

The book consists of set pieces, wry and self deprecating at times, painfully realistic at others. All but one have been published elsewhere, and mostly work quite well as a single narrative here, except for the occasional repeated fact that perhaps should have been excised.

The most powerful essay here is the last one, "The Aquarium," a sad tale of his second daughter's losing battle with a rare brain cancer. I've rarely read something so real and raw. When he recounts a rushed, desperate trip through the streets of Chicago to the hospital, his life spiraling out of control with his daughter's suffering, he looks out his car window and sees "everything turned away quite leisurely from the disaster." The distance between him and all the rest of unknowing and indifferent humanity is starkly real.

The Book of My Lives is filled with difficulties, joys, warmth, and oddities. Whatever story Hemon is recounting, we want to hear more.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
No Discernible Narrative Thread. Still totally compelling.
By Jacquelyn
I had been thinking for a while that a book has to have a narrative thread in order to pull the reader in. But then I came across this book and it blew that theory out of the water. The individual chapters for this book were all published as separate stand-alone pieces (mostly in the New Yorker) so the book is truly a collection of disparate pieces. It starts off with a story about the birth of the author's sister, then it discusses identity issues when the family moves to Canada, then it talks about how he moved out of his parent's home and got his first real job. One chapter is about the family dog! Another is about playing chess! Another is about the importance of soccer in his life! How the heck could I have possibly found this book interesting?! And yet I kept turning the page because I liked hanging out in this guy's head. His descriptions were honest, deftly and sparingly stated, and full of insight. I would love to hang out with him in real life but, alas, he would probably be a curmudgeon (that's what he says in the book) and I'd probably be afraid of him judging me, so lucky me, I get to read his book. I actually wish I could continue reading the book now, but unfortunately, I finished it. Clearly, I need to pick up another book by Aleksandar Hamon!

The backdrop of the story, and narrative thread if any, would have to be the turmoil in Bosnia during the 90s, which forces his family to migrate and compels him to be a writer. The turmoil is Bosnia has nothing to do with soccer or pet dogs or chess, but these are the common-place things that dominate our lives, I guess, even amidst chaos and unrest.

He reminds me of Milan Kundera, minus the misogyny.

Hemon's language is not high-falutin' in the least but he is probably more readable to something looking for deep insights.

I'm giving this five stars, which I don't think I've ever given before. I can't believe English is this guy's second language.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A Tale of Two Cities
By Miriam Day
This funny, sad, readable and thought-provoking book is a collection of articles that has been edited and reassembled, by the author, into a memoir of his three lives.

The first life, prior to the vicious 1990s civil war in Yugoslavia, is lived in Sarajevo - a city which Aleksandar Hemon conjures in brief and memorable vignettes. Here, he explains, his primary sense of teenage identity came not from his cultural background but from the gangs to which every self-respecting boy belonged. In contrast he describes the inevitable question posed during and after the civil war by combatants, international journalists and bureaucrats alike: 'What are you?' To which the only admissible answer was the reductive tick-box identity of ethnicity or religion.

Fleeing Yugoslavia as it is fractured along sectarian and ethnic lines he finds refuge in the USA, leaping from the centuries-old mixing pot of Sarajevo into the fires of Chicago - a city of refugees. As he recounts his struggles to create a second life we are introduced to a succession of others who have been similarly dislocated, from the multi-national football team whose players are known by their country of origin to the Assyrian, Peter, who beats him at chess.

This second life is bought to a close by a bereavement which creates a rupture with all former sense of self, as certain bereavements are wont to do. Hemon's account of this loss is merciless - to the reader and most of all to himself - and it brings the book to a sobering and difficult end. But this very private coda casts its light on all that has been recounted before, a challenge to the sentimentalisation of suffering beloved by Hollywood in which loss is so often seen as a prelude to 'redemption'. In the world that Hemon conjures there is no purpose or nobility in pain, be it private and personal or meted out on the streets of Sarajevo.

Incisive, humorous, partial and angry, The Book of My Lives is filled with deftly drawn characters, pithy, humane and provocative observations,and anger. Often enjoyable and always easy to read, it is much harder to forget.

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