"An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood." -- Chicago Tribune
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s.
Dedicated to her parents--from whom she learned a love of language and the importance of following your deepest passions--Dillard's brilliant memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.
Review Quotes:
"A remarkable work...an exceptionally interesting account." - New York Times
"[An American Childhood] combines the child's sense of wonder with the adult's intelligence and is written in some of the finest prose that exists in contemporary America. It is a special sort of memoir that is entirely successful...This new book is [Annie Dillard's] best, a joyous ode to her own happy childhood." - Chicago Tribune
"Loving and lyrical, nostalgic without being wistful, this is a book about the capacity for joy." - Los Angeles Times
"The reader who can't find something to whoop about is not alive. An American Childhood is perhaps the best American autobiography since Russell Baker's Growing Up." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"An American Childhood shimmers with the same rich detail, the same keen and often wry observations as her first book [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek]." - Charlotte Observer
"By turns wry, provocative and sometimes breathtaking...This is a work marked by exquisite insight." - Boston Globe
Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Harper Perennial
Pub Date: July 20, 1988
ISBN: 9780060915186
0.7" H x 7.9" L x 5.2" W
272 pages
paperback