My Cold War

<p>A sharp searching novel of an American son and the family he left behind 埦rom a writer of rare breadth and human insight.</p><p> <em>My Cold War</em> is a critically acclaimed debut novel of extraordinary depth and range: the story of a man's alienation and attempts at reconnection with his family and a rich exploration of the thorny implications of American popular culture. </p><p> At its center is John Delano a professor of Cold War Studies and successful mass-market historian a la Stephen Ambrose or Ken Burns. Raised by an awkward embittered father and a frustrated mother in a Levittown-style suburb on Long Island Delano has made a name for himself as a gimmicky interpreter of Cold War America a controversial but popular repackager of events like the JFK assassination for those who lived through them without noticing. </p><p> And yet as the novel opens Delano has reached an impasse: during a crisis of confidence he shelves a major new book project in favor of a quest to drive to the Midwest and seek out his estranged younger brother. But when the trip ends in a sobering discovery that his brother has led a life of desperate transience grasping at straws and scapegoats 埨e undergoes an epiphany that propels him back to the newly sacred ground where he and his brother were raised.</p><p> Long recognized as a writer of exceptional vision and unflinching candor Tom Piazza has crafted a novel full of incident and argument a book that speaks with depth and range about what it has meant to be American in our time.</p>