368 pages | 15th March, 2011 | Non-fiction | Biographies & Memoirs
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author: a beautifully crafted memoir of his lifelong chase after his father’s shadow.
John was eleven months old when his father, Barney Darnton—a war correspondent for The New York Times—was killed in World War II. John’s mother, a well-known reporter and editor, perpetuated a myth of Barney as a hero who gave his life for his family, country, and the fourth estate. Decades after his father’s death, John and his brother, the historian Robert Darnton, began digging into the past to discover who the real-life Barney Darnton was. When they did, they found a man who was far different from the story they had grown up with. Intensely moving and vividly descriptive, Almost a Family is the compelling story of one man’s search for the truth.
"Wonderful. . . . John Darnton has taken [the memoir] to a new level. . . . Gripping, moving, and fascinating."
The New York Times Book Review
"Inspiring. . . . Exciting, deeply felt, evocative of past worlds and times, and full of first-rate reporting. . . . [A] fine book."
The New York Review of Books
"Unusually absorbing. . . . Poignant. . . . Unfailingly tasteful and profoundly sympathetic, clear-eyed yet humane."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Gripping. . . . Darnton writes with assurance, and the book is structured like a good novel, filled with unexpected twists and turns.”
The Washington Independent Review of Books
"Darnton uncovers a more complicated man as he debunks family-entrenched myths about his parents’ marriage and the circumstances of his father’s death. He writes tenderly about his mother’s loneliness and her bouts with alcoholism."
The New Yorker
"Two haunting narratives, a sobering account of a fatherless childhood and of the relentless pursuit of evidence about a man [Darnton] longed to know."
The Boston Globe
John Darnton has worked for forty years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was awarded two George Polk Awards for his coverage of Africa and Eastern Europe, and the Pulitzer Prize for his stories that were smuggled out of Poland during the period of martial law. He is a bestselling author whose previous novels include Neanderthal and The Darwin Conspiracy. He lives in New York.
US: Knopf