My Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a Family

New York: Harper Perennial, May 2006. Trade Paperback. First Paperback Edition / full number line. Fine. Black remainder mark to bottom edge, otherwise pristine inside and out. Not from a library. xiii + 254 + 18 pages reader's guide.

A memoir of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, an immigrant community in the shadow of the Statue if Liberty, and the story of how his father and his grandfather's dreams-and their own passion for writing and ideas-influenced Steven's future, and inspired him to seek his fortune in New York City, the media capital of the world. This is a story of a town and a time and a boy who grew up there, a boy who became a New York Times correspondent, TV and radio personality, and best-selling author. The town was Bayonne, New Jersey, a European village so close to New York that Steve could see the Statue of Liberty from his bedroom window. The time was the forties and fifties, when children of immigrants were striving to become American and find a place in a booming post-war world. The core of Steve's world was one block, where he lived in a house his grandfather, Harry Schanbam, had built with his own hands.