Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (588 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0684838486 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-01-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Painful Times Emilie Debrigard I was looking for context for the Hollywood Blacklist. Although Bosworth's father, Bart Crum, played a fairly minor role in the Blacklist affair, as he defended only two of the accused screenwriters, nonetheless his involvement was crucial. He was a liberal Republican in a crowd of New Dealers, fellow travelers, and Communists. In the end he wasn't able to get off scot free. Bosworth lets the reader draw concl. "Pages and Pages of Name Dropping" according to L. Rudy. There were definitely some interesting parts of this book, but I found myself skipping several pages of "name dropping" of people I didn't really know (perhaps this was meant for a much older generation). I found myself far more interested in what the family was experiencing during this man's busy life, but those parts were stretched out quite a bit. I enjoyed hearing about the gardens of their Aptos farm and . A painful story I had no idea what this book would reveal when I began reading it. I find this story to be so sad about a father and husband who chased ideas and ideals and left his family alone. I think he was a very selfish man as he chased one dream after another. I do value the history very much as told by the author. I am glad that I chose to read this book because I got to see another part of pain in a dysfunctional fam
Crum, to defend unpopular leftists at home and Jewish refugees desperate to get into Palestine abroad, even as she depicts his lengthy absences and financial carelessness wreaking havoc on his wife and children. Patricia Bosworth's portraits of her unhappy, adulterous mother and withdrawn, suicidal brother are equally nuanced. She pays tribute to the liberal idealism that led her father, Bartley C. The author profiles her relatives with the same sensitivity she brought to biographies of Montgomery Clift and Diane Arbus. The subtitle says it all: "An American Family Story."
But when his defense of the Hollywood Ten made him a target of the FBI's andcommunist hysteria, public pressures and personal demons brought his once-charmed life to a tragic end. -- Charles Kaiser, The New York Observer. Interweaving public and private vignettes, his daughter's memoir re-creates Crum's life and times with rare and moving honesty."Consider this beautiful, saddening book on a par with Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.It is an extraordinary documentwritten with blood and tears". "A memorable and moving book about a man -- indeed, a family -- of Fritzgeraldian proportions -- a distinguished and gripping American saga". -- Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World"Extraordinaryas beautifully written as any memoir I have ever read". -- Todd Gitlin, Chicago TribuneThrough the prism of her father's life as a lawyer and well-known political activist, Patricia Bosworth sheds light on an important era in modern American history -- from the heady, hope-filled days of Roosevelt's New Deal to the dawn of the Cold War.In the course of a remarkable career, Bartley Crum represented movie stars and labor leaders, advised presidents and presidential hopefuls, emerged as a key figure in the creation of Israel, and became a forceful voice for civil rights