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Summary
Author Notes
Bob Greene is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His book topics have included politics, basketball, and rock and roll; he toured with Alice Cooper to get the background for Billion Dollar Baby (1974).
His books are often a collection of his newspaper columns, covering a wide range of topics with interesting portraits of both everyday people and celebrities, but sometimes focus on his own reactions to life's changes. The rediscovery of his old high school diary resulted in Be True to Your School: A Diary of 1964 (1987). Turning age 50 led to his The Fifty Year Dash: The Feelings, Foibles, and Fears of Being Half-a-Century Old (1997).
Greene was born in 1947 and lives in Illinois with his wife, Susan, and their daughter Amanda, who provided the inspiration for his book Good Morning, Merry Sunshine: A Father's Journal of His Child's First Year (1984).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Greene (Rebound) here presents a collection of 104 columns, many of them laments for the days when life in America seemed simpler and Americans more civil. His premise is that "[t]he real truths of our lives don't make the morning paper or the six o'clock news." He tells of a surgeon who saved a woman's eyesight, a farmer who won 11 ribbons at an Ohio county fair, a 47-year-old man afflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease who located the selfsame car he had driven at age 17, a businessman who worked until he was 94 and a high school soccer player who requested that his game-winning goal be disallowed. But this is not a feel-good view of the country; Greene also writes of present-day urban violence, parents abusing their children, children persecuting their peers for real or fancied differences. Included in the mix are anecdotes about the famousJack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Stan Musial. In all, the message in this collection is a depressing one: Greene seems convinced that the fabric of American life is unraveling and is likely to unravel further. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Greene (The 50 Year Dash, 1996; Hang Time, 1992; etc.) collects a hundred or so transitory essays celebrating the old human virtues and decrying the new human vices. Clearly, journeyman observer Greene is against moral shortcuts, meanness, and the demise of courtesy. Let there be no doubt: He is all for the eternal verities, homely and straightforward. His views, all under the rubric of ``human interest,'' are Janus-like, totally despairing and happily sanguine by turns. Now he espies endemic moral rot (e.g., parents who beat one of their children and stuff him in a drawer, out of sight); then, just when that seems to be the paranoid theme, he comes up with positively folksy goodness (the persistent cop who senses something amiss and finds the boy's hiding place). One page may despair of ``the coarseness of language, the celebration of violence, the constant devaluation of civility.'' The next page may cheerfully report true parental love or sweet generosity. With datelines from such precincts as Rensselaer, Ind., Ebensberg, Penn., and Bexley, Ohio (his hometown), Greene tells, in eight or nine hundred adroitly crafted words, of wise old people, murdered babies, enthusiastic boosters, grouchy customers, devoted daddies, and brave kids, and all kinds of dramatis personae short of a faithful dog. He interviews a Berkeley student known as ``the Naked Guy'' (for clear reasons). He discovers inspiration at county fairs, Yankee Stadium, and the vast Mall of America. Greene's quotidian passing parade may be one of rampant nostalgia and of sentiment verging on the maudlin, but truth to tell, he's pretty good at it. The stories are generally entertaining and, sometimes, if you're in the right mood, truly moving. A talented journalist in the old tradition serves some traditional apple pie with a bit of corn, and it may just suit a reader somehow predisposed to good feeling.
Booklist Review
Although nowhere is it stated that this book is a compilation of Greene's newspaper columns, that's certainly what it feels like--more than 75 short pieces celebrating the minutiae of American life. As in almost all Greene's other mysteriously popular books--the smarmily personal nonfiction and the truly icky fiction--the tone here is ersatz insightful. It's Bob's world, and the rest of us are too stupid to understand that if only we were appreciative of the little things about life in the 1950s (Greene's piece of nirvana), we would all be so much happier. As Bob puts it, "It often seems to me that what we all may be searching for are those elusive Chevrolet summers and Dairy Queen nights we once knew and that once, at least in memory, made us and our country feel fine and special and right." The fact that not everyone may have grown up with that America--and that many who did neither long for nor idealize it--simply never occurs to Mr. Whitebread. Readers are treated to pieces about Greene and a buddy finding the little wooden desks they sat in during grammar school, or about a pal from Greene's hometown spotting a 1960 Ford Galaxy--the same car he drove in high school! Perhaps to ensure that readers don't lapse into a coma from too much sugar, there are also pieces about hard-hitting subjects such as the brutality of modern-day criminals and America's lack of appreciation for its vets. Mean crooks and unloved vets--just the kind of stuff that drives a person back to . . . Dairy Queen. --Ilene Cooper
Library Journal Review
Greene (The 50 Year Dash, LJ 10/1/96), a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune, has compiled a book of essays from his columns that tell the tale of everyday life in 20th-century America. These are stories that don't make the headlines. They concern, for example, the symbiotic relationship between a 110-year-old mother and her 82-year-old daughter, who live as roommates in a nursing home; the 78 acres of land known as "The Mall of America"; the case of a small-town cop who saved a child's life by double-checking, on a hunch, a closed case of suspected child abuse; and an ode to Robert L. Manners, who owned 37 Big Boy restaurants. The theme that unites these stories is how "the small moments of our livesthe thing no respectable editor would ever think to feature on the front pagegrow in importance as time passes, resonate even louder in our memories and in our hearts." Greene writes deftly; his gift for home truth is refreshing. Recommended for public and academic libraries.Susan Dearstyne, Hudson Valley Community Coll., Albany, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.