Life Sketches

April 1, 1989
For over 40 years Hersey has been contributing profiles and character sketches to a variety of magazines, and this is a selection of what his publisher finds the best of them. They vary considerably in interest, read, as they must be, many years after their initial urgency. On writers, his reminiscence of Sinclair Lewis, for instance, is much more compelling than his rather slavish tribute to Lillian Hellman. On presidents, his noncommittal account of JFK and his PT-109 experience is more revealing than his over-detailed and too-cozy depiction of one of Harry Truman's early morning walks. Perhaps disappointingly to his publisher, his review of Alfred Knopf's fascination with our national parks is probably the least absorbing piece in the book. Hersey is best at unknowns: Jessica Kelley, the tiny, brave widow who survived (barely) the 1955 Connecticut flood, or Private John Daniel Ramey, who learned to read and write in the Army in World War II. And there is a splendid account of a persistent black man trying to win the vote in Mississippi in the early '60s. Hersey always writes clearly and un pretentiously, and the best of these pieces are very superior journalism indeed. BOMC selection.

April 1, 1989
Written over a 50-year span, this collection contains 18 profiles of the well known and the obscure. Hersey skillfully presents, for example, a day in the life of Bernard Baruch; John F. Kennedy's PT 109 adventure; and a lively personal encounter with Harry Truman. Just as probing and insightful are his profiles of the less familiar--a black Civil Rights activist, a missionary, and a widow threatened by flood. Although many of these pieces originally appeared in The New Yorker, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Plain and unadorned, this effortlessly--or so it seems--captures the inner essence of its subjects. For most libraries.-- Mark R. Yerburgh, Trinity Coll. Lib., Burlington, Vt.

Copyright 1989 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.