"Until age eroded memory, I could recite “Sailing to Byzantium” at any hour in any pub in the world. When I first went to Ireland in the 1950s, I toured all the sacred sites as pilgrim: Sligo, Innisfree, Drumcliff, Ben Bulben, Galway, Thor Ballylee, Coole Park. I get goose bumps still just by saying the names."

"Baldwin’s grand novel, Another Country, delivers beatnik-era 1950s, with characters who are on all sides of black, white, gay and straight, twisting complex lives into a magical taffy of perfection. By humanizing the bourgeoning civil rights movement and changing attitudes towards women, Baldwin creates a historical portrait of America that is a great key to understanding where we come from."

"I love this drama by Nicholas Ray, shot in CinemaScope. James Mason plays a professor and family man who has a troubled relationship with over-the-counter drugs. Bigger Than Life is a modern take on U.S. society in the 1950s that was unusual at a time when Hollywood and television were invested in depicting picture-perfect nuclear families. The film is both disturbing and fascinating."

"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."