My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time

Author of the widely acclaimed New York Times Notable Book The Gutenberg Elegies , distinguished critic and essayist Sven Birkerts explores in this brilliantly written memoir what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture. The son of Latvian immigrants, Birkerts describes how his struggle to find his own path thrust him up against the myths of his origins-the turbulent lives of his grandparents, whose artistic ambitions played out against a backdrop of revolution and war-as well as the excesses of the 1960s counterculture. A moving saga of a writer’s painful-and comic-coming-of-age, My Sky Blue Trades is an absorbing chronicle of the circuitous path Birkerts took to becoming one of America’s foremost literary figures.