About this item
An engaging, funny, and tender memoir from a man of ninety years: of growing up poor in a Brooklyn and Ireland that now exist only in memory, and of serving in the China/Burma/India theater during World War II as a member of an elite U. S. Navy commando unit John Freely's voice is still astonishingly youthful, full of wonder, humor, and gratitude, as he remembers his fully lived life. Born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants, he went to Ireland with his mother when he was five, where he spent his young childhood on his grandfather's farm. Western Ireland was impoverished by the times, but rich in beauty and intriguing people, and it opened in him a lifelong desire to see the world and its inhabitants. When he was seven, he returned to Brooklyn, and the antics of a coming-of-age boy played out on streets filled with character and characters.
About the Author
John Freely was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York to Irish immigrant parents, and spent half of his early childhood in Ireland. He dropped out of high school when he was 17 to join the U. S. Navy, serving for two years, including combat duty with a commando unit in the Pacific, India, Burma and China during the last year of World War II. After the war, he went to college on the G. I. Bill and eventually received a Ph. D. in physics from New York University, followed by a year of post-doctoral study at Oxford in the history of science. He worked as a research physicist for nine years, including five years at Princeton University. In 1960 he went to ?stanbul to teach physics at the Robert College, now the Bo?aziçi University, and taught there until 1976. He then went on to teach and write in Athens (1976-79) , Boston (1979-87) , London (1987-88) , ?stanbul (1988-91) and Venice (1991-93) . In 1993 he returned to Bo?aziçi University, where he taught a course on the history of science. His first book, co-authored by the late Hilary Sumner-Boyd, was Strolling Through ?stanbul (1972) . Since then he has published more than forty books.
