My Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a Family - Softcover

Roberts, Steven V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060739940 ISBN 13: 9780060739942

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2006

Synopsis

From Steven V. Roberts comes My Fathers' Houses, a memoir of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, an immigrant community in the shadow of the Statue if Liberty, and the story of how his father and his grandfather's dreams–and their own passion for writing and ideas–influenced Steven's future, and inspired him to seek his fortune in New York City, the media capital of the world.

This is a story of a town and a time and a boy who grew up there, a boy who became a New York Times correspondent, TV and radio personality, and best–selling author. The town was Bayonne, New Jersey, a European village so close to New York that Steve could see the Statue of Liberty from his bedroom window. The time was the forties and fifties, when children of immigrants were striving to become American and find a place in a booming post–war world. The core of Steve's world was one block, where he lived in a house his grandfather, Harry Schanbam, had built with his own hands.

About this title

About the Author:

Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program, This Week. She is the bestselling author of We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Ladies of Liberty, and Founding Mothers.

Steve Roberts is the author of From Every End of This Earth and My Fathers' Houses. He has worked as a journalist for more than forty years and appears regularly as a political analyst on the ABC radio network and National Public Radio. Since 1997 he has been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Cokie and Steve Roberts are the New York Times bestselling authors of From This Day Forward. They write a weekly column syndicated in newspapers across the country by United Media. The parents of two children and grandparents of six, Cokie and Steve live in Bethesda, Maryland.

From Publishers Weekly:

This memoir tells "a story of a town and a time and a boy who grew up there." The town is the New York suburb of Bayonne, N.J.; the time is the 1940s and '50s; and the boy is Roberts, syndicated columnist and coauthor (with his wife, Cokie Roberts) of From This Day Forward. Growing up, Roberts's Old World ties were strong. His Jewish family had their roots in Eastern Europe, and he proudly relates the story of how they came to America (his maternal grandfather, Abraham Rogowsky, is particularly fascinating: born in Bialystok, he stole money to become a Zionist pioneer in Palestine in 1907). Roberts also recounts how his parents met in the mid-'30s in New Jersey-"two shy and sensitive souls, sophisticated about books and innocent about life"-but the book doesn't really hit its stride until the author begins describing his own experiences. He paints a reflective portrait of his childhood and young adulthood, when he played and fought with his twin brother, Marc, and when he attended Harvard University, where he met Cokie Boggs, his future wife. "All families have their own folklore, stories they tell and axioms they use," Roberts writes. Thankfully, the stories told here have widespread appeal. As the author's family name changes from Rogowsky to Rogow to Roberts, a universal story of the American experience of immigrant conversion emerges from all the carefully limned details. Photos.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060739940
• ISBN 13: 9780060739942
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288