Life Sketches - Hardcover

Hersey, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394577841 ISBN 13: 9780394577845

Publisher: Knopf, 1989

Synopsis

The author presents a collection of his biographical sketches of memorable individuals both famous and obscure, from Sinclair Lewis and John F. Kennedy to the children of the Holocaust

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

For over 40 years Hersey has been contributing profiles and character sketches to a variety of magazines, and this is a selection of what his publisher finds the best of them. They vary considerably in interest, read, as they must be, many years after their initial urgency. On writers, his reminiscence of Sinclair Lewis, for instance, is much more compelling than his rather slavish tribute to Lillian Hellman. On presidents, his noncommittal account of JFK and his PT-109 experience is more revealing than his over-detailed and too-cozy depiction of one of Harry Truman's early morning walks. Perhaps disappointingly to his publisher, his review of Alfred Knopf's fascination with our national parks is probably the least absorbing piece in the book. Hersey is best at unknowns: Jessica Kelley, the tiny, brave widow who survived (barely) the 1955 Connecticut flood, or Private John Daniel Ramey, who learned to read and write in the Army in World War II. And there is a splendid account of a persistent black man trying to win the vote in Mississippi in the early '60s. Hersey always writes clearly and un pretentiously, and the best of these pieces are very superior journalism indeed. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Written over a 50-year span, this collection contains 18 profiles of the well known and the obscure. Hersey skillfully presents, for example, a day in the life of Bernard Baruch; John F. Kennedy's PT 109 adventure; and a lively personal encounter with Harry Truman. Just as probing and insightful are his profiles of the less familiar--a black Civil Rights activist, a missionary, and a widow threatened by flood. Although many of these pieces originally appeared in The New Yorker , the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Plain and unadorned, this effortlessly--or so it seems--captures the inner essence of its subjects. For most libraries.
- Mark R. Yerburgh, Trinity Coll. Lib., Burlington, Vt.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0394577841
• ISBN 13: 9780394577845
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 377