Memoir from Antproof Case

<p>An old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the naval academy he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói overlooking the ocean.</p><p>As he reminisces and writes placing the pages carefully in his antproof case we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice an investment banker who met with popes and presidents and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century a murderer and a protector of the innocent. And all his life he waged a valiant losing one-man battle against the world's most insidious enslaver: coffee.</p><p>Mark Helprin combines adventure satire flights of transcendence and high comedy in this memoir of a man whose life reads like the song of the twentieth century.</p>