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Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling It the Way It Was: An Oral History Audiobook
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Publisher Description
"The numerous voices presenting these oral histories are flowing, velvety, glib, humorous, and always passionate...This is an informative and heartwarming retrospective of life in the Bronx, in addition to an enlightening look at the changes in our society and culture." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
A touching and provocative collection of autobiographical anecdotes that evoke the history of one of America's most influential boroughs--the Bronx--through some of its many success stories
The vivid oral histories in Arlene Alda's Just Kids from the Bronx reveal what it was like to grow up in the place that bred the influencers in just about every field of endeavor today. The Bronx is where Michael Kay, the New York Yankees' play-by-play broadcaster, first experienced baseball, where J. Crew's Millard (Mickey) Drexler got his street smarts and his first jobs, where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dava Sobel were urged to pursue science and where music-making inspired hip hop's Grandmaster Melle Mel to change the world of music forever.
The parks, the pick-up games, the tough and tender mothers, the politics, the gangs, the food--for people who grew up in the Bronx, childhood recollections are fresh. Arlene Alda's own Bronx memories were a jumping-off point from which to reminisce with a nun, a police officer, an urban planner, and with Al Pacino, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Maira Kalman, Bobby Bonilla, and many other leading artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs--experiences spanning six decades of Bronx living. Alda then arranged these pieces of the past, the mornings on the Grand Concourse and afternoons in the halls of Bronx Science, into one great collective story, a film-like portrait of the Bronx from the early twentieth century until today.
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"Among the wonders of Arlene Alda's wondrous book is the stunning quality of the storytelling. Just Kids from the Bronx is a Bronx tale, to be sure--a collective picture of a place characterized by citizen yearnings to be elsewhere and the glorious discoveries and self-discoveries that come with staying put. But the parts that go into this whole are equally rich as pieces of literature. Nearly every one of these offerings, including the author's own, is a little work of art, each contributor foraging for the meaning and the music of a life.The result is America in a borough--at once hopeful, dangerous, regenerative, tough, joyous, and in the end, beautiful."
— Roger Rosenblatt, New York Times bestselling author of Making Toast and of The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood
Quotes
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“I was mesmerized reading about the childhoods of celebrities and leaders in fields from art to science, revealing the roots that launched their journeys from humble beginnings in the Bronx to extraordinary success. An eye-opener into what drives the creation of remarkable lives. I will long remember this wonderful book.
— Walter Mischel, author of The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control, Professor of Psychology, Columbia University -
“A down-to-earth, inspiring book about the American promise fulfilled.”
— President Bill Clinton -
“Fascinating…Made me wish I had been born in the Bronx.”
— Barbara Walters, multi-award–winning broadcast journalist -
“A complex, compelling oral history.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“More than sixty evocative oral histories…ponder the question she [Arlene Alda] poses: ‘How did they find a place for themselves?’”
— New York Times -
“A loving portrait of a borough…Every story is a gem.”
— Huffington Post -
“A terrific oral history…Of interest even to those who were not lucky enough to grow up Bronx.”
— Star-Ledger (Newark) -
“An amazing cross section of personal stories that takes the reader through the Bronx in the eyes—and the words—of some of the borough’s most famous sons and daughters.”
— New York Daily News -
“A fabulous collection…There are few readers who won’t be touched by this affectionate look backward, which is as much about the universal state of childhood as the specific borough of the Bronx.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Whether it was the women’s changing room at Loehmann’s department store, riding a bike to Pelham Bay Park, or running to an apartment block to fetch someone for a telephone call at the corner store, living in the Bronx made an impression on all of them as they worked their way up the American dream ladder…Entertaining and informative cherished memories from a diverse group from the Bronx.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Four talented narrators deliver the sixty-five biographical sketches—three to four minutes each—that describe growing up in the Bronx… Alan Alda, Christina Delaine, Regis Philbin, and Robert Klein deliver the sketches without much fanfare. Alan Alda reads most of the biographies in the soft voice we’re familiar with. Delaine takes on most of the female sketches, while Philbin and Klein switch off on the rest in slower, carefully enunciated tones. If you, your parents, or your relatives grew up in the Bronx, you’ll love these reminiscences.”
— AudioFile
Awards
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Among shortlisted titles for Audie Award Finalist, 2016
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About the Authors
Sophie Littlefield is an Anthony and RT Book Award winner. She lives with her family near San Francisco.
Arlene Alda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, received a Fulbright Scholarship, and realized her dream of becoming a professional clarinetist, playing in the Houston Symphony under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. She switched careers when her children were young and became an award-winning photographer and author who has written numerous books, including Just Kids from the Bronx. She is the mother of three daughters and the grandmother of eight. She and her husband, actor Alan Alda, live in New York City and Long Island.
About the Narrators
Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce for eleven years in the television series M*A*S*H and has acted in, written, and directed many feature films. He has starred often on Broadway, and his avid interest in science has led to his hosting PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 and has been nominated for thirty Emmy awards.
Regis Philbin has been entertaining television audiences for more than fifty years, in daytime reigning as a beloved morning-show host, in nighttime as an über game-show host, and also as a fixture on national and local late-night shows. He is most widely known for Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee and its subsequent incarnation Live! With Regis and Kelly; Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; Million Dollar Password; and the first season of America’s Got Talent. Philbin is the proud recipient of five Emmy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Broadcasting & Cable Lifetime Achievement Award, the Walter Camp Distinguished American Award at Yale University, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2006 he was inducted into both the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the Television Academy’s Hall of Fame. He lives in New York and Connecticut with his wife, Joy.
Christina Delaine is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator and accomplished stage actress. Her theater credits include Jewtopia, the longest-running comedy in Off-Broadway history, and the title role in Antigone at both Portland Center Stage and Kentucky Repertory Theatre. She holds a BA degree from Dartmouth College and an MFA in acting from Brown University.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.