"I’ve never been a huge fan of David Lean’s epics and think the modest British films he did in the 1940s are superior. I also wouldn’t have thought he had a glimmer of humor, but this film is witty, and the actors (even Charles Laughton) have been directed with insight."

"The most profound thing I’ve ever read on both the war and racist America of the 1940s, commissioned by the U.S. Army to examine the effectiveness of their employment of black soldiers. Lee came up with such damning information about the military that it was withheld from public view until 1966. Powerful."

"Read this memoir for a glimpse of a vanished country (ours, circa 1940s/1950s/1960s) that had an entirely different notion of education and the arts, i.e., a country that valued them and honored them and supported them with money and muscular institutions, which institutions, in turn, produced courageous and original national artists like Glass – who is also, turns out, a wonderfully gifted, honest, and amiable writer."

"“For some reason I became enraptured by this book as a teenager. It smelled really amazing and dusty. I think our copy was from the 1940s and the pages would crumble as I turned them. I’ve never been so careful while reading a book, and I think that really endeared it to me. I’m very calmed by methodical descriptions of farming. The images of opium addiction amongst the wealthy Chinese aristocracy, who ‘smoked the flesh off their bones’, always come back to my mind; it’s so decadent and horrifying.”"