All right, I only spent 6 months in the city, which is hardly any time at all, but from what I saw and heard, Sally Belfrage's wonderfully ballsy and observant book hits it right on the head. I fell in love with Belfast, and when you read this book, you'll see why. I know a few people over there who swear by "Living with War," - which has none of that partisan nonsense, thank heavens. Finally a book as crazy, funny, sad, thought-provoking and phenomenonally surreal as the city itself!

Sally Belfrage is an American who lives in London and attempts to unscramble the obvious, intricate dissenion that exists in Northern Ireland. An almost impossible task for anybody. I was therefore sceptical at first when picking up this book and wondering how anyone, who has spent a fragmented year in Belfast (which is a short time) to write a book on this very complex problem. I was pleasantly surprised as she handles her topic in a professional, unbiased, journalistic approach. For the novice that knows little of the Northern Irish conflict, she summarises in brief but accurate detail the origins of each group and then progresses into introducing the different points of views, fears, anger of the various groups. She does this by introducting you to everyday people and their lifestyle, not limiting it to any one particular section of this multi-faceted area, always trying to show as many angles as possible. Her style of writing is swift and visually descriptive so that the reader is able to obtain a very accurate description of what it is like to actually be in Northern Ireland. It is filled with horrific stories but at the same time with inspirational reflections. Her stylistic tempo never wavers or slows down. I realised after reading this book, that it is often an outsider who will give a reader the broadest and most unbiased story of all if they have researched their topic sufficiently, which she has

_Freedom Summer_ is a richly detailed account of a young white woman who participated in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's summer project in Mississippi in 1964. The text covers one incredibly intense summer from the basic training session in June to the Democratic Convention in August. I will assign this text in my Civil Rights Autobiography course next semester because, aside from being a clearly-written account of a chaotic time, it will answer some of the questions I know my students will have, such as: what was it like to be a Civil Rights worker? what was it like to be arrested and thrown in a Mississippi jail? what were the day to day activities of people working in the Movement? how were the workers received by the black and white communities? or how do you decide go enter Mississippi after you've just learned that three summer project workers have disappeared and are presumed dead?

I was intrigued by Sally Belfrage's memoir after reading the jacket synopsis. McCarthyism and a memoir of growing up -- all in the same book? Okay, I was game. This book will knock you off your feet. Not only do you get a glimpse of a time that you might only read about briefly in school history books (depending on how interested you are), but you get to read about Ms. Belfrage's dramas and traumas and happiness of growing up. She was trying to find a fit for herself in the two complete opposites in her life: Her father who was accused of being a communist and was deported from the US and her boyfriend, the West Point cadet. Tossed in the mix is her mother, whom Ms. Belfrage lived with until age 20, who just cannot relate to her daughter nor her daughter to her (her mother was also deported -- this is when Ms. Belfrage moved in with her father). There's a great story written here -- and I mostly appreciate Ms. Belfrage's honesty in both the retelling of her personal life and the retelling of a life the was forced upon her because of her parents' choices. I would recommend this book to everyone!

This title came out in paperback only a few short years ago, and received almost uniformly rave reviews. Now it is out of print. HarperCollins, the publisher, is to be booed roundly for failing to keep such a valuable and well written time capsule of the 1950's in print, as an important antidote to the treacle about this era that "Nick at Nite" continues to perpetuate.

I know nothing of Sally Belfrage, save for the wonderful and witty glimpses at her life contained in UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES, and that her death four years ago is a loss at once untimely and tragic. It is easy and perhaps good to be cynical about the American memoir--this being the realm of writing, after all, that often falls prey to numbing self-aggrandizement or an equally offensive "woe is me-ism." But where others sing the praises of an unattainable past or apologize for national pathologies, Belfrage embraces ambiguity with a voice that is both witty and serious. For those of us born after the 1950s--i.e. those whose conceptions of the period are informed by Henry Winkler and Bill Haley on one pole and the baleful stare of Roy Cohn on the other--this book is an entertaining and effective antidote to our shared cultural myopia. Suddenly, my parents make so much more sense to me...