The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived: A True Story of My Family
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.50 (788 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0399174591 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-03-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Turns out, it’s in his genes.” —David Von Drehle, Time editor-at-large and author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America“Tom Shroder set out to understand the life of his once-famous grandfather, best-selling author MacKinlay Kantor. That’s lucky for us—because his roots turn out to be dazzling, shocking, sexy, and heartstring-tugging. But what started as an attempt to rescue an illustrious ancestor from obscurity turns into a far more intimate and compelling journey into the meaning of fame, family, creativity, and the things we carry from childhood to the grave. The old man may not have been the Most Famous, but in the fifties, particularly after the great Andersonville, he was a writer god. Shroder’s visceral reactions and moving discoveries as he comes to terms with his grandfather’s life make for a trip well wort
A unique and memorable literary family history Mike Wilson This is the story of a famous writer and an often unlikable man, written by his less famous grandson who may be a better writer and certainly is a better man. When Tom Shroder was young, the work of his grandfather, the Pulitzer Prize winning author MacKinlay Kantor, seemed about as hip and relevant as war bonds and Perry Como. But when Shroder matured and b. Get past the middle doldrums. My review and ratings for this book are broken into three distinct parts:Three stars for the first two-thirds, because it was intermittently interesting and engrossing, but sometimes confusing to try to keep track of whose grandfather/father he was talking about.By the time I got to the last hundred pages or so, I had dropped it to a one star with these comm
Tom Shroder is an award-winning journalist, editor, and author of Old Souls and Acid Test, a transformative look at the therapeutic powers of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of PTSD. His most recent editing project, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time, by Brigid Schulte, was a New York Times bestseller. As ed
MacDonald, and is credited with discovering the singer Burl Ives. He was an early mentor to John D. Shroder's most fascinating reporting, however, comes from within his own family: his grandfather, MacKinlay Kantor, was the world-famous author of Andersonville, the seminal novel of the Civil War. He wrote the novel Glory for Me, which became the multi-Oscar-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives. Kantor's friends included Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandberg, Gregory Peck and James Cagney. As a child, Shroder was in awe of the larger-than-life character. A veteran of the Washington Post and Miami Herald among others, Shroder has made a career of investigative journalism and human-interest stories, from interviewing South American children who claim to have memories of past lives for his book Old Souls, to a former Marine suffering from debilitating PTSD and his doctor who is pioneering a successful psychedelic drug treatment in Acid Test. He ghostwrote General Curtis LeMay's memoirs, penning the infamous words "we're going to bomb them back to the Stone Age" regarding North Vietnam. Kantor also suffered from alcoholism, an outsized ego, and an overbearing, abusive, and publically embarrassing personality where his family was concerned; he blew through a small fortune in his lifetime, dying nearly destitute and alone. In The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived, Shroder revisits the past--Kantor's upbringing, his