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From Goodreads:
Fermin Rocker was born in the East End of London in 1907, the son of Rudolf Rocker, the famous anarchist theorist, activist and disciple of Kropotkin. A book illustrator, and painter, in exploring his origins as an artist, Fermin conjures a moving and colorful picture of his remarkable father, of Anarchism and of the Jewish East End. Heavily illustrated by the author.
This slim memoir is about half perceptive and well-written anecdotes illuminating a very particular time and culture, and about half with the same subject but kind of dry. Possibly the parts I found dry would be more interesting if I knew anything about the anarchists he was describing. The illustrations, unsurprisingly, are lovely.
Fermin Rocker (his real name) was very close to his German father, who was interned during WWI along with Rocker's mother. This, like his account of the war and the splitting of anarchists over the Russian Revolution, is a heavy topic that he treats with delicacy without glossing it over. But just as much of the book is about the things he happened to remember from his childhood, from his childhood habit of peeing down on cops from off his balcony to his father's bedtime stories to the anarchist who gets treated to a lavish meal from an anonymous donor who turns out to be a local Mafia leader impressed by anyone who had two detectives tailing him at all times.
Rocker comes across as a good guy, both idealistic and willing to question his assumptions. Also, based on a photo at the back of the book, he was really hot stuff when he was a young man.
Fermin Rocker was born in the East End of London in 1907, the son of Rudolf Rocker, the famous anarchist theorist, activist and disciple of Kropotkin. A book illustrator, and painter, in exploring his origins as an artist, Fermin conjures a moving and colorful picture of his remarkable father, of Anarchism and of the Jewish East End. Heavily illustrated by the author.
This slim memoir is about half perceptive and well-written anecdotes illuminating a very particular time and culture, and about half with the same subject but kind of dry. Possibly the parts I found dry would be more interesting if I knew anything about the anarchists he was describing. The illustrations, unsurprisingly, are lovely.
Fermin Rocker (his real name) was very close to his German father, who was interned during WWI along with Rocker's mother. This, like his account of the war and the splitting of anarchists over the Russian Revolution, is a heavy topic that he treats with delicacy without glossing it over. But just as much of the book is about the things he happened to remember from his childhood, from his childhood habit of peeing down on cops from off his balcony to his father's bedtime stories to the anarchist who gets treated to a lavish meal from an anonymous donor who turns out to be a local Mafia leader impressed by anyone who had two detectives tailing him at all times.
Rocker comes across as a good guy, both idealistic and willing to question his assumptions. Also, based on a photo at the back of the book, he was really hot stuff when he was a young man.
, which reaches the heights of fine literature, but Sanders's book is informative and worth reading if you're interested in the subject.
is more of general interest, assuming that medical details don't make you turn green and then faint. He wrote it in 1938, looking back on his long career as an American doctor, and the first chapter looks even farther back, to medicine as it was practiced in his boyhood (the 1880s).
, by Brendan Halpin. After her mothers are killed in an accident, a teenage girl ends up with the biological father she never knew. A YA novel told entirely in emails, journal entries, recorded conversations, etc, it’s clever and funny but the form eventually becomes wearisome.
, by Alison Uttley. A childhood memoir barely veiled in fiction by the author of many mostly-forgotten but quite good British children’s books. If you like vivid descriptions of old-timey life in rural England, and I know I do, this book is for you. There’s no plot, but who cares? 
, by Diana Pavlac Glyer. An excellent analysis of the Inklings as a writing group. Recommended to anyone with any interest in the Inklings, or who has basic knowledge of them and is interested in how writing groups function.
, by Andre Norton. This bizarre fantasy put the Bermuda Triangle, elves, aliens, time travel, and Avalon in a blender, then forgot to actually blend. People from our world blunder into another weird world where they meet others from all periods of history, and learn that elves in flying saucers are kidnapping people and making them go cold and glowy, or maybe the flyer saucer people were aliens and the elves were someone else, it was hard to tell. Roman soldiers march, nixies attack, and there might be unicorns, I forget. Disjointed and strange, and I have no idea what was going on during the climax—and by “no idea,” I mean that, for instance, I could not tell whether or not several characters died. A mildly entertaining farrago of randomness.
