Terrific read.

Not quite successful somehow, though very readable.... Not quite engrossing. A son's search for his father he never knew, a New York Times journalist killed on the battlefield in WWII. His absence haunted the family as this son grew up to become a NYT journalist himself. There are mysteries that John Darnton digs into but never quite excavates fully, in the sense of laying bare all that could be exposed...both within himself, his mother, and--most centrally--his father.On closing the book, I fel...

He is a really wonderful writer and I could really understand his life’s journey. It is not a book that will capture everyone’s attention. I was moved to tears at times.

I really feel bad only giving this book 1 star because it is well written and I can tell the author put his heart and soul into writing it. While the family history is important to him, it was more than I wanted to read. In order to justify a memoir I expect that the subject led a remarkable life (either good, bad, or a mixture)but this is just another sad story about someone who died as a result of war. The subject was just a regular guy, working hard at his profession, who had a family. I only...

Darnton's account of his childhood and his investigation of his father's life and death is well-written and interesting. There's also a strange connection to Adrian, Michigan...Darnton's father grew up in Adrian, in a well-known and well-established family. John Darnton visited Adrian during his research (and acknowledged Jan Richardi in the text) to visit his father's grave and connect with his father's family.

the bravest memoir i have ever read. long in the gestating but well worth the wait. an amazement and a disappointment, especially after a fullsome cover review in the NYTBR, that this gorgeous piece of writing and bold exploration of the lies that infect most families, but few this dramatically, didn't fly off the shelves. if you haven't read it you are missing something very special, written by a pulitzer prize winning colleague who lived his own life, long and well, before tackling the subject...

The book was a 3 for the first 100 or so pages, and a 5 after that. Great piece of investigative journalism, made all the more poignant since he's investigating the circumstances around his own father's death.

Didn't finish.

A moving, beautifully written, heartbreaking book that is uplifting in the end, showing that a person can overcome a rocky, neglected childhood and still come out with honor, decency, talent, success and even humor.

Some books make you think that the biggest mistake one can make in life is being born. There's a bit of that here, but there is also an element of inexplicable fortitude and good fortune. John and Robert Darnton, the one a successful journalist, the other a distinguished academic, somehow managed to survive losing their journalist father early in WWII and then coping with their alcoholic mother until one wild and terrible night, the mother went through four episodes of DT's with only 14 year-old...

Almost a Family is the memoir of John Darnton's journey to discover his father who died as a war correspondent when he was 11 months old. I was excited about this book initially, thinking it would be an interesting look into the world of journalism through the life of one man in the war era. As I read it, I realized that while I did learn much about journalism of the era, I also got a lot more about the life of the author than I anticipated--how he met his wife, his job, etc. Much of the book fo...

It's easy to trust the writing of a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, and John Darnton was worthy of that trust. He writes a memoir of his life, shaped by the absence of his father, who was killed while on assignment for the New York Times in WWII. After his retirement, the author searches for details about his father, even going to Papua New Guinea to visit the spot where his father was killed.Darnton's research finds, not too surprisingly, his father's flaws as well as his virtues. The real a...

An impressively well-written memoir. It begins with the events surrounding the death of the author’s father, a NYT correspondent during WWII, and ends with the author visiting the place in Papua New Guinea where his father met his untimely end. In between, Darnton recounts his memories (or lack thereof) of his father, his difficult childhood, and his mother’s downward spiral into alcoholism. He demonstrates how his own adult life unintentionally seemed to run parallel to his father’s: reporting

In the beginning, ii reads like a typical third person memoir. As the book goes on, the story of the author's life intertwined with his quest to learn about his father and how he died becomes more and more compelling. By the last few chapters, I was completely immersed in the story.

Beautiful book of a son's search for a father he never knew. What happens to you when you don't know your father? It's a powerful question. Mr. Darnton, a journalist, follows in the footsteps of the father he never knew, who was also a journalist. Darnton attempts to learn about his father's life, his death, and his relationship to his mother. The story also tells what happened to the three family members left upon his father's death: Darnton, his mother and his older brother. Having lost my own...

Very interesting story set in the Pacific battles of WWII. The author, who lost his father at 11 months, tries to find the "truth" behind the myths his family has created to carry on after the father's passing. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction with its twists and turns.

Author John Darnton was a reporter for the New York Times for over 40 years, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of martial law in Poland in the early 80s. He brings the clear eye of an objective journalist to this memoir about his family. Darnton never knew his father Barney, who was also a reporter for the New York Times. When World War II broke out Barney left for the South Pacific as a correspondent for the Times, leaving behind his wife Eleanor, son Bob and son John, who was less than...

This memoir of a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist recounts the author growing up without his father (killed in WWII), and his journey to becoming a star reporter at the NYT. I was more interested in his descriptions of what it was like to work as a foreign correspondent than in the actual family history.

I was unable to understand the need of the author to "find" his father and by the end, though I saw the need, I couldn't tell what difference it made. This was a very soul/heart rending memoir, written with lots of detail and clear images of what life was like for the author. I wanted to cry and did for a lot of the stories he told. I don't think we ever really know our parents but we definitely have ideas about them that become our truths. I hope the author found the truths he needed not only o...

I came away a bit mixed-minded about this book. I did not find it to have the emotional context that I was expecting. I was really looking for a deeoer sense of how the loss of the author's father molded the latter's life but I did not find that.