Reflections on America and the American experience as he
has lived and observed it, by the bestselling author of
The Greatest Generation.
In this beautiful
memoir, Tom Brokaw writes of America and of the American
experience. From his parents’ life in theThirties, 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.
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