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Born in Louisiana to a soon-to-be absent father and an alcoholic motherwho tried to drown him in a bathtub when he was threeClifton Crais spent his childhood perched beside his mother on a too-tall bar stool, living with relatives too old or infirmed to care for him, or rambling on his own through New Orleans, a city both haunted and created by memory. Indeed, it is memoryboth elusive and essentialthat forms the center of Craiss beautifully rendered memoir History Lessons. In an effort to restore his own, Crais brings the tools of his formal training as a historian to bear on himself and his family. He interviews his sisters and his mother, revisits childhood homes and pores over documentary evidence plane tickets, postmarks, court and medical records, crumbling photo albums.