The World Is My Home: A Memoir - Softcover

Michener, James A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812978137 ISBN 13: 9780812978131

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2007

Synopsis

Literary legend James A. Michener was “a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart” (The New York Times Book Review). In this exceptional memoir, the man himself tells the story of his remarkable life and describes the people, events, and ideas that shaped it. Moving backward and forward across time, he writes about the many strands of his experience: his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life. Here at last is the real James Michener: plainspoken, wise, and enormously sympathetic, a man who could truly say, “The world is my home.”
 
Praise for The World Is My Home
 
“Michener’s own life makes one of his most engaging tales—a classic American success story.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“The Michener saga is as full of twists as any of his monumental works. . . . His output, his political interests, his patriotic service, his diligence, and the breadth of his readership are matched only by the great nineteenth-century writers whose works he devoured as he grew up—Dickens, Balzac, Mark Twain.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“There are splendid yarns about [Michener’s] wartime doings in the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener himself—analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer, chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers.”—The Plain Dealer
 
“A sweepingly interesting life . . . Whether he’s having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener’s world is a place and a time worth reading about.”—The Christian Science Monitor

About this title

From the Back Cover

"CAPTIVATING . . . HIGHLY REVEALING."
--The New York Times

"MICHENER IS EVERYTHING HE SAYS, AND MORE. . . . The best parts of this engaging and readable work concern his World War II experiences in the South Pacific, where he met a woman actually named Bloody Mary (long before the drink was invented) and where he stumbled on a miserable little Melanesian village whose name so charmed him that he wrote it down: Bali-H'ai. The story of how his often hilarious adventures turned into a book and then a Broadway musical so successful that after opening night he couldn't afford to buy a ticket is really the heart of his autobiography."
--The Washington Post Book World

"A SWEEPINGLY INTERESTING LIFE . . . Rivals any fiction for tales of geographic or mental adventure. . . . Whether he's having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener's world is a place and a time worth reading about."
--The Christian Science Monitor

"TOUCHING AND REVEALING."
--San Francisco Chronicle

From the Inside Flap

JAMES MICHENER was "a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, energetic, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart."* Now, one of America's most beloved novelists gives us the story of his own remarkable life . . . .
(*The New York Times Book Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0812978137
• ISBN 13: 9780812978131
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592