by Pete Hamill
First published 1994
Pete Hamill grew up during the Depression and World War II believing that drinking defined manhood. Alcohol wove itself through every meaningful moment: celebrations, funerals, friendships, romance, and religious rituals. As a young man in New York City, Hamill carried these lessons into his career as a reporter. But drinking that once seemed essential to his identity gradually threatened what mattered most to his craft: clear thinking, sharp awareness, and reliable memory. This bestselling memoir follows Hamill's slow recognition of alcohol's grip on his life and his eventual decision to break free from it. He reconstructs a vanished America through the eyes of a lifelong New Yorker, capturing the culture of drink that shaped his generation. The New York Times called it "a vivid report of a journey to the edge of self-destruction," while the Boston Globe praised it as a story "about growing up and growing old, working and trying to work, within the culture of drink."
Genres: addiction, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, self-discovery
Setting: New York City
Period: The Depression, World War II
265 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: addiction, alcohol-abuse