Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack: A Boyhood Year During World War II
- Book Review,
by Charles Osgood
From Publishers Weekly
Osgood's memoir of growing up in Baltimore's Liberty Heights neighborhood circa 1942 echoes with the same measured cadence and disarmingly simple structure that the anchor uses in his CBS radio and TV broadcasts. The Emmy Awardâ€"winning broadcaster pulls readers into a seductive world, as he relates his obsession with baseball, his love of radio programs (which had a "profound influence" on him) and his experiences with other slices of Americana. Yet the war news affected Osgood, too, if in a minor way: he built a stink bomb with a friend ("weapons of mass disgust to waft at the enemy"), pinned a tiny Japanese flag over Manila on the map mounted on his bedroom wall and wondered "just how much of Africa needed liberating." His reminiscences are a basic nostalgic archetype, where plucky kids, strong families and sunny optimism are the order of the day, compared with Osgood's version of today's world, where ill-educated and pessimistic masses throng America's streets. The author talks about how, as a child aged eight to 12, he simply wanted to make people happy, imagining that if he were a child today, he'd be sent to a psychiatrist for such behavior. The golden-hued streets of Osgood's Liberty Heights are a bona fide paradise, drenched with more nostalgia than even Barry Levinson could offer, without a shred of acknowledgment of memory's distortion of events over time. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
For a nine-year-old boy living in Baltimore, 1942 was as memorable for the childhood mischief of plaguing the nuns at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic school and making stink bombs for national defense as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Conceding the tendency to sugarcoat childhood memories, Osgood renders sharp details of a life he insists was actually simpler and sweeter, even with the threat of war. In contrast to the arranged play dates of today's children, Osgood remembers walking out the front door and gathering other children for an impromptu baseball game. Radio figured prominently in childhood entertainment and imagination, leaving its mark on a boy who would later make a career in both television and radio. Osgood recalls listening to favorites Captain Midnight, Dick Tracy, and Superman. The beloved Baltimore Orioles and a local amusement park expanded the fun beyond his neighborhood of Liberty Heights. Osgood also recalls the underlying menace of blackout shades and air raid sirens, the sense of unity and duty in the neighborhood victory gardens, and collecting scrap metal and old newspapers to help the war effort. A warm, humorous look at the nation at war from a boy's perspective. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Dan Rather
"[Osgood] . . . is one of the best writers in America today, any form or medium. Fresh, pithy, funny, and relevant . . . "
Jim Lehrer
"One of the greatest talents in broadcasting today . . . His pieces . . . are delightfully sage, compassionate, and witty."
Book Description
From one of television's most beloved and trusted personalities... a captivating memoir about growing up during World War II. From the popular host of CBS News Sunday Morning comes a warm and witty memoir -- in the tradition of Russell Baker's Growing Up and Tom Brokaw's A Long Way from Home -- of one unforgettable year in Charles Osgood's childhood. The year is 1942, and while America is reeling from the first blows of WWII, Osgood is just a nine-year-old boy living in Baltimore. As the war rages somewhere far beyond the boundaries of his hometown, he spends his days delivering newspapers, riding the trolley to the local amusement park, going to Orioles' baseball games, and goofing around with his younger sister. With a sharp eye for details, Osgood captures the texture of life in a very different era, a time before the polio vaccine and the atomic bomb. In his neighborhood of Liberty Heights, gaslights still glowed on every corner, milkmen delivered bottles of milk, and a loaf of bread cost nine cents. Osgood reminisces about his first fistfight with a kid from the neighborhood, his childhood crush on a girl named Sue, and his relationship with his father, a traveling salesman. He also talks about his early love for radio and how he used to huddle under the covers after his parents had turned off the lights, listening to Superman, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and, of course, to baseball games. Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack is a gloriously funny and nostalgic slice of American life and a moving look at World War II from the perspective of a child far away from the fighting, but very conscious of the reverberations.
About the Author
Charles Osgood, who has been dubbed CBS News' "poet-in-residence," writes and anchors The Osgood File four times daily over the CBS Radio Network and anchors CBS News Sunday Morning every week. He is the winner of three Emmys and three Peabody Awards; Washington Journalism Review named him the "Best in the Business" five years running; and in 1990 he was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jean. They have five children.
Excerpted from Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack by Charles Osgood. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"As a nine year-old patriot on the home front, I helped to collect scrap rubber, scrap metal, tinfoil, old newspapers, and even cans of fat for the war effort. Some of the tinfoil came from my father's packs of cigarettes, some of it came from my packs of gum, and some of the rubber came from rubber bands that I took home from school. Stealing them wasn't a sin because I kept hearing that God was on our side. Praise the Lord and pass the school supplies. That year, 1942, was the best of times for a Baltimore boy who always seemed to be feeling good and the worst of times for a nation reeling from the first blows of World War Two."
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