Hardcover 100% of proceeds go to charity! May have signs of use, wear and minor cosmetic defects.

Hardcover 100% of proceeds go to charity! May have signs of use, wear and minor cosmetic defects.

Text is clean...Quantity Available: 1. ISBN: 0393057569. ISBN/EAN:

Text is clean...Quantity Available: 1. ISBN: 0393057569. ISBN/EAN: 9780393057560. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 1560749401.

The book appears New, The Dust Jacket has light wear. Quantity Available: 1.

The book appears New, The Dust Jacket has light wear. Quantity Available: 1. ISBN: 0393057569. ISBN/EAN: 9780393057560. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 1560788109.

Advance Reader's Copy. Rare limited softcover printing issued before

Advance Reader's Copy. Rare limited softcover printing issued before publication. The pages of the text are clean, crisp, and unmarked. No creasing along the spine, and no bent page corners. The book is in excellent condition inside and out. All items guaranteed, and a portion of each sale supports social programs in Los Angeles. Ships from CA.

33, [1]5 pages. Michael Dirda book list. Index. DJ has minor wear and

33, [1]5 pages. Michael Dirda book list. Index. DJ has minor wear and soiling. Slight corner bumping. Signed by the author on the title page. The memoirs of a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist and critic discusses his childhood and education in small-town Ohio, his colorful family and friends, and his voracious appetite for reading. Michael Dirda (born 1948) is a book critic for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree in 1970, Dirda took an M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977 from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the Washington Post; in 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his criticism. Currently, he is a book columnist for the Post. Derived from a Kirkus review: The Washington Post Book World's Pulitzer-winning book critic recalls in evocative prose his youth in Ohio. Dirda grew up in the home of a bored and bitter steelworker who could not understand why his son's nose was permanently parked in a book. Still, the elder Dirda emerges as a positive force in this marvelous memoir, nowhere more poignantly than when he advised his son, at the time feeling overmatched at Oberlin, that he just needed to work harder. Michael did, and graduated with highest honors in English. The story of the author's life is an account of the myriad books he read, of the social consequences exacted by his personality, of the adults who influenced him, of the young men he befriended, of the young women he lusted after and pursued, at times clownishly. Virtually every page is crowded with allusions to texts, accounts of how specific writers influenced him, and quotations. As a boy he favored adventure stories; Bomba and Tarzan were a couple of jungle favorites. In junior high he met a charismatic teacher who challenged him with books that few young adolescents would today attempt, e.g., Crime and Punishment. He read the way starving omnivores eat, from Shakespeare to Dale Carnegie, from Thoreau to Lloyd C. Douglas, from Clifton Fadiman to Ayn Rand. A high-school French teacher fed him other books like bon-bons and took him and some others on an 8, 000-mile car trip one summer. With puberty came clumsiness and sexual silliness, then it was off to nearby Oberlin, where he learned about music and art and hard work. An effervescent yet self-effacing tale of a youngster who viewed a library as an all-you-can-eat buffet-and greedily gorged.