Tell me something, tell me anything, even if it's a lie: a memoir in essays - steve wasserman

An exhilarating journey through the world of books, featuring personal reflections on Susan Sontag, Huey Newton, Barbra Streisand, W.

Sebald, and Christopher Hitchens.

A troublemaker of the good kind since his youth, Wasserman continues to inspire with his vigorous dedication to the life of the mind, exhibited with clarity and grace in this book.

-- Viet Thanh Nguyen Born on the West Coast, the son of Bronx-born parents, Steve Wasserman is a generalist and public intellectual but is perhaps less well known as a cultural essayist and social critic of the first rank.

In thirty splendid essays, originally published in such diverse publications as The New Republic and The Nation , The American Conservative and The Progressive , The Village Voice and The Economist , Wasserman delivers a riveting account of the awakening of an empathetic sensibility and a lively mind.

Taken together, they reveal the depth and breadth of his enthusiasms and range over politics, literature, and the tumults of a world in upheaval.

These essays include the remarkable tale of a bookstore owner who wouldnt let him buy the books he wanted, to his brave against-the-grain take on the Black Panthers, to his shrewd assessment of the fast-changing world of publishing.

Here is, as Joyce Carol Oates notes, arguably the very best concise history of Cuba and the legendary Fidel Castro; beautifully composed eulogies for two close friends, Susan Sontag and Christopher Hitchens; sharply perceptive commentary on Daniel Ellsberg; a thrillingly candid interview with W.

Sebald.