Snatched from Oblivion: A Cambridge Memoir

Marian Cannon Schlesinger's memoir is already a classic. Her account of growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early decades of the 19th century is full of wit and insight, a picture of a community and way of life now virtually disappeared. Her descriptions of Cambridge characters, local politics, college life, town-gown confrontations, and travels in the Italy and China of the thirties, as well as reminiscences of her childhood in a remarkable household of high-spirited individuals (her mother was a feminist and writer, her father, professor of physiology at Harvard Medical School) are vivid and often hilarious. Her drawings illustrate the text.