20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times : The Start : 1904-1930

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Memoir
Review: Shirer's moving account of his formative years in Chicago, Cedar Rapids, and as a young reporter in Paris ranks as solid autobiographical writing. I like how this renowned journalist parallels history with a revealing narrative of his youthful yearnings, setbacks, and rebellious insights. Future historians will read this volume to feel the rhythms of everyday life from 1904-1930. Career, personality, and luck exposed young Shirer to many notables, and his portraits of acquaintances like Hemmingway, Sinclair Lewis, Isadora Duncan, and Eamon De Velera add spice to the narrative. Some academic historians jealously dismiss Shirer's best-selling books, but I find his eyewitness accounts illuminating and his prose superior. The first of three volumes, this memoir is more personally revealing than The Nightmare Years, Shirer's superb account of Nazi Germany and A Native's Return, his homecoming finale. Writes Shirer in the introduction, "...it is an interesting fate being an American in the Twentieth Century. I am glad it was mine."

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Memoir
Review: Shirer's moving account of his formative years in Chicago, Cedar Rapids, and as a young reporter in Paris ranks as solid autobiographical writing. I like how this renowned journalist parallels history with a revealing narrative of his youthful yearnings, setbacks, and rebellious insights. Future historians will read this volume to feel the rhythms of everyday life from 1904-1930. Career, personality, and luck exposed young Shirer to many notables, and his portraits of acquaintances like Hemmingway, Sinclair Lewis, Isadora Duncan, and Eamon De Velera add spice to the narrative. Some academic historians jealously dismiss Shirer's best-selling books, but I find his eyewitness accounts illuminating and his prose superior. The first of three volumes, this memoir is more personally revealing than The Nightmare Years, Shirer's superb account of Nazi Germany and A Native's Return, his homecoming finale. Writes Shirer in the introduction, "...it is an interesting fate being an American in the Twentieth Century. I am glad it was mine."