Last Fine Time, The

Rating:
Summary: A Great Work About A Special and Forgotten Place and Time
Review: I'm so glad to see this fine book back in print. I'd recommend anyone with an interest in post WWII America, the contributions
of the working class, the decline in the industrial economy and
the urban to suburban shift pick up a copy before it disappears from print again.
Klinkenborg does a masterful job of weaving all of these themes together and from this reader's standpoint it's as if he was there.

Rating:
Summary: A touching story about a truly American place
Review: It has become almost cliche to say that modern writers make a character of the settings of their novels. But in this book, the author truly vitalizes Buffalo, N.Y. Through the novelized true story of his wife's Polish immigrant parents and details plucked from two centuries of municipal history, he weaves a story about a place that is arguably the most American of cities. Situated on a Great Lake, with the belching prosperity of smokestacks and a miraculous curtain of snow as backdrops, he tells the story of a family that finds a home in industrial America. Gritty urban scenes give way to a confrontation between the races which ends in a flight to the suburbs. In "The Last Fine Time" we find the story of a family, and of a once-great city, that is a fable about American life. He answers the question of how, in 100 years, puritanical farmers became the empowered factory workers that became alienated, shell-shocked suburbanites on the edge of the 21st century.

Rating:
Summary: A battered queen
Review: This is the best book ever written about Buffalo, the best book, fiction or nonfiction, that uses Buffalo as background. The decline of a proud city, enabled by its matter of fact certainty about destiny and greatness, is recounted with intelligence and a generous style. The sadness of change is inescapable, but people's memories, especially those of Polish Americans, create a light that still shines in the city's shadows.

Rating:
Summary: This is America
Review: This rich story is a tapastry of who we are as a nation. It is our history. This book can teach us a lot about how to make our cities live again.