This is a wonderful window into the early twentieth century. I'm sure it seemed exciting but familiar to people of the 1930s, when he wrote it. But from 2016, it is fascinating and alien. The book starts during his years at the University of Chicago in the waning months of the Great War, takes him to New York as a broke young man after his mother dies where he becomes a reporter. He then travels to Europe, ends up in Morocco during the Riff War and manages to befriend and interview the leader of that rebellion. He spends time in China during the Chinese Civil War of the mid-1920s, travels to Palestine during the massacres of 1929, Persia for the installation of the new Shah, and then broke again, comes back to tour the United States and give lectures to the public, greeting America again as a somewhat estranged native son, and coming to a new understanding of his own people.
Sheean is a profoundly thoughtful and open-minded person, and it was a delight to encounter all of these different cultures from his perspective. He explores early communism from the Chinese, and then the Soviet perspective. Enters Palestine as a Zionist, and leaves not as one, for reasons he lays out clearly and after much consideration. He has a kind and open-hearted soul, and looking at the world through his eyes makes it fresh for his reader as well.
There are so many topics that have been declared utterly off-limits for modern debate - communism, socialism, capitalism, Zionism/the existence of Israel, antisemitism, foreign wars for capital gain, colonialism and the destruction of cultures inherent in that endeavor. He shines a light on all of these topics with a gentle, well-considered judgment, which leaves the reader in no doubt about his opinions, without making any claims to a final truth.
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Top reviews from other countries
AmeliaL
A fascinating trip through the early 20th century by a kind and percipacious guide
Reviewed in the United States on 12 November 2016Molly
Autobiographical and Political
Reviewed in the United States on 26 April 2015