My Cold War
by Tom Piazza
In his thought-provoking first novel, Piazza takes his readers on a nostalgic tour that includes his own version of growing up in Long Island’s postwar suburbia. John Delano is the sole faculty member in the department of cold war studies at Hollister College, and his classes are wildly popular, focusing on personalities and big moments, what his critics call “History McNuggets.” John is writing a book on these themes, but after his father dies he is stuck in “a big mishmash of history, myth, my own personal experience.” He decides that to write about the Kennedy and King assassinations, Castro, fallout shelters, Kent State, even Bob Dylan going electric, he must first confront his own past, starting with his estranged brother. John returns to his hometown, where they grew up with a bitter, anticommunist father, and, surprisingly, finds some positive memories lingering among all the sad ones. Piazza’s journey down memory lane is enlivened by his witty take on competitive academia, and deepened by his poignant tale of a family broken, it may be, beyond repair. Deborah Donovan. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
