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by: Pete Hamill
Amazon.com's Price: $28.00 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5409
EAN: 9780316341080
ISBN: 0316341088
Label: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 280
Publication Date: January 19, 1994
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Sales Rank: 473844
Studio: Little, Brown and Company
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A journalist and author of Loving Women recreates the hard-drinking Brooklyn-Irish lifestyle that informed every aspect of his childhood and early career and that eventually destroyed his marriage. 30,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Fascinating voyage through a different America
Pete Hammill's biography is fascinating from our modern perspective. Seeing the life transition of the author along with the characters in his neighborhood brought that period to life for me. Strong, muscular writing that evokes his experiences in a visceral way. Terrific book.
Rating:  - An Engrossing Tale
I picked this book up out of desperation for something, anything to read...and I must admit that the title clinched the deal. "A Drinking Life" - I couldn't resist. Drama, angst, highs, lows...it's all right there in the title.
What I wasn't expecting was a book that depicts a time, place and way of life that has always fascinated me. One of the reasons I love "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the vivid and at the same time, faded sepia description of a New York, and an America that ... Read More
Rating: - Growing Up Irish in Post-War Brooklyn
Pete Hamill"s deeply introspective memoir of his coming of age during the late 40's and 50's in working class Brooklyn is a brutally honest account of how alcohol gets integrated into certain rights of passage as people , especially men navigate the transition to adulthood.
His story could be anyone's, except that Hamill writes in a gripping personal style that infuses each episode in his young life with a sense of urgency. The struggle to reconcile with a distant father never deteriorates ... Read More
Rating: - A robust tale of liquor and literature
In my quest for chronicles that detail the often entwined aspects of drink and journalism, I was delighted to discover Pete Hamill's candid tale, robust and surly - an account that carries the reader through his lushly-detailed memoirs that began in blue-collared Brooklyn. As the son of struggling Irish immigrants, Hamill grew up during the Depression with the enduring beliefs of the working-class neighborhood in which he lived -street-fights, low pay, loyalty to the neighborhood, and machismo drinking. ... Read More
Rating: - Real Life with Compassion
A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill is a reflection on his drinking past. Without sentimentality Hamill tells a hard story. He portrays a loving mother, and an alcoholic father. He chronicles his impoverished childhood, his tough coming of age, his difficult search for meaning, his newspaper career, and his regrets about the way he treated his first wife and children. As the title implies his memories are tied together by recollections of alcohol, and a drinking culture that both fascinated and repelled him. ... Read More
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