O America When You And I Were Young

The ""O"" in the title is heartfelt; Barzini obviously relishes the America he knew just before the 1929 Crash changed it irrevocably. Perhaps he loves his youth a little too; he was only sixteen in the mid-Twenties when he arrived in New York, where his father, a noted journalist from Milan, was establishing an Italian newspaper. Young Barzini studied journalism at Columbia and worked as a cub reporter, getting to know the Long Island suburb in which his family lived and--more intriguingly--discovering American girls at a time when they were in an experimental mood. In 1930, daunted by the lack of job prospects, he returned to Italy, eventually writing the highly successful The Italians, which explained his countrymen to a waiting world. Now he has turned his quizzical eye on Americans, at that time when he thinks they were most themselves: before the Depression and ambiguous wars knocked the self-confident stuffing out of them. He plays the game of national character very well, but it remains only a game, good enough for late talk over a bottle when an absence of profundity goes unnoticed, but quick to evaporate on the printed page. More interesting than his speculations are the specifics of his youthful life in America, which he writes about with sustained charm, creating an immensely likable persona in the process. -- kirkusreviews.com