Black Boy – Richard Wright
It occurred to me as I was listening to a wonderful reading of Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945) that it …
Tag Archives: Books:Memoir
Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans
Ken Burns’ PBS series, The Vietnam War has been much in the news, and on many minds, this fall, 52 years …
Croatia — The Sorrows of Separation
The news from Spain and Catalonia this week has made my blood run cold. Plebiscites, exuberance, declarations of independence. The …
Johnny The Partisan — Fighting in the Hills of Asti and Alba, Italy
The French resistance to the Nazis in WW II was much celebrated after the war. Whatever their actual resistance and …
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
It’s hard to know what words to use to praise a book like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. It’s not a …
The Starched Blue Skies of Spain – a Remembrance by Josephine Herbst
The Starched Blue Skies Of Spain by Josephine Herbst is a small, mostly overlooked gem of reportage/memoir from the Civil …
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain’s Memoir of WW I
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, recently brought to view by the movie of the same name, unaccountably escaped my decades long reading …
Vera Brittain: Not only the Movie, the Book
Military historian, Simon Jones, says Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth, upon which the new movie is based, is one …
Boots to the Sun — An Italian Memoir of the “Great War”
Two indispensable companions are always with me on late-life trips across the seven continents. Leading the way is my excited-to-be-there, take-everything-in life …
Fear: A Memoir from The French Trenches, WW I
Fear: A Novel of World War I by Gabriel Chevallier, 1930 is such a powerful indictment of war that in …
WW I: Siegfried Sassoon As His Eyes Open
Siegfried Sassoon, despite his Germanic name, his wealthy family and Jewish heritage, became one of England’s most famous soldier-poets of …
WW I: Austrians and Russians
In most determinations of the responsibility for the outbreak of WW I, Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Serbia comes a close second …