The dynamic and always controversial television producer shares fifty years of show business and politics, with all the candor and wisdom expected from the creator of All in the Family.
The legendary creator of iconic television programs All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear remade our television culture—while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic, and social involvement. Sharing the wealth of Lear's ninety years, Even This I Get to Experience is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led.
In the 1970s, Lear's comedies were viewed by 120 million people per week, with stories that reflected the most serious issues of their lives and still left them howling. But before this, Lear led a charmed life throughout postwar Hollywood's golden years, befriending the likes of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks; writing and directing Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford, Dick Van Dyke, and Martha Raye; becoming the highest-paid comic writer in the country while working for Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Norman Lear also flew some fifty bombing missions over Germany with the Fifteenth Air Force.
Shamelessly in love with the country the Founding Fathers laid out for him while his own father was serving time, Lear won the first American Legion Oratorical Contest speaking about the Constitution. He later founded People for the American Way, a national organization to protect the civil rights and liberties of us all, and bought an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed the night of July 4, 1776, not to hang on a wall in his home but to travel across the country to schools, and libraries, and public institutions to be shared with citizens everywhere.
Married three times and the father of six children ranging from nineteen to sixty-eight, Lear's penetrating look at family life, parenthood, and marriage is a volume in itself. Told with the charm and candor of one of the century's greatest storytellers, Even This I Get to Experience is nothing less than a profound gift, endlessly readable and characteristically unforgettable.
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“Narrating his own memoir, Lear looks back on his long life mostly with wry amusement and humane acceptance, but he also expresses a range of emotions—from exasperation to wonder and grief. His voice sounds, understandably, a bit creaky but engaging and expressive as well. His pacing and timing are excellent as he keeps the material fresh, his tone reflecting his memories as he recounts them. It’s a remarkable life filled with accomplishment in television, film, and political activism, and his accounts are moving and revealing. Anyone with an interest in the past sixty years of entertainment should be absorbed and may find that, like life itself, the book goes by too quickly.”
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