| A Long Way from Home: Growing Up in the American Heartland in the Forties and Fifties Contributor(s): Brokaw, Tom (Author) |
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ISBN: 0375759352 ISBN-13: 9780375759352 Publisher: Random House Trade OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2003 Annotation: In A Long Way from Home, Tom Brokaw describes his childhood and youth in South Dakota, and the people and places in the American heartland of the 1940s and 1950s that continue to shape his life today. As he reflects on the American experience as he lived and observed it during the central decades of the twentieth century, Brokaw writes of his parents' lives during the Great Depression, his boyhood along the Missouri River, the happy days of his adolescence in Yankton, and his early years in broadcast journalism on the cusp of the turbulent 1960s. As he recounts his own American pilgrimage, Tom Brokaw also explores what brought him and so many Americans to lead lives a long way from home, yet forever affected by it. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Editors, Journalists, Publishers - Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts - Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs |
| Dewey: B |
| Physical Information: 0.56" H x 5.28" W x 8" (0.42 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation, whose iconic career in journalism has spanned more than fifty years From his parents' life in the Thirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a reflection on America in our time. Tom Brokaw writes about growing up and coming of age in the heartland, and of the family, the people, the culture and the values that shaped him then and still do today. His father, Red Brokaw, a genius with machines, followed the instincts of Tom's mother Jean, and took the risk of moving his small family from an Army base to Pickstown, South Dakota, where Red got a job as a heavy equipment operator in the Army Corps of Engineers' project building the Ft. Randall dam along the Missouri River. Tom Brokaw describes how this move became the pivotal decision in their lives, as the Brokaw family, along with others after World War II, began to live out the American Dream: community, relative prosperity, middle class pleasures and good educations for their children. "Along the river and in the surrounding hills, I had a Tom Sawyer boyhood," Brokaw writes; and as he describes his own pilgrimage as it unfolded--from childhood to love, marriage, the early days in broadcast journalism, and beyond--he also reflects on what brought him and so many Americans of his generation to lead lives a long way from home, yet forever affected by it. Praise for A Long Way from Home " A] love letter to the . . . people and places that enriched a 'Tom Sawyer boyhood.' Brokaw . . . has a knack for delivering quirky observations on small-town life. . . . Bottom line: Tom's terrific."--People "Breezy and straightforward . . . much like the assertive TV newsman himself."--Los Angeles Times "Brokaw writes with disarming honesty."--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Brokaw evokes a sense of community, a pride of citizenship, and a confidence in American ideals that will impress his readers."--Richmond Times-Dispatch |