Author of the widely acclaimed
New York Times Notable Book
The Gutenberg Elegies, distinguished critic and essayist Sven Birkerts explores in this brilliantly written memoir what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture. The son of Latvian immigrants, Birkerts describes how his struggle to find his own path thrust him up against the myths of his origins-the turbulent lives of his grandparents, whose artistic ambitions played out against a backdrop of revolution and war-as well as the excesses of the 1960s counterculture. A moving saga of a writer's painful-and comic-coming-of-age,
My Sky Blue Trades is an absorbing chronicle of the circuitous path Birkerts took to becoming one of America's foremost literary figures.
