David Pietrusza is primarily known for his books that capture presidential election years — 1920, 1948, 1960, and 1932, which chronicles the near-simultaneous elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler.
He has also written much-praised biographies of such disparate subjects as Calvin Coolidge, Judge Kennisaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, and gambler Arnold Rothstein, who almost certainly fixed the 1919 World Series.
For his latest work, Pietrusza engages in self-analysis in "Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory, A Vanished World." It is less an autobiography than a warm reminiscence of growing up in the 1950's and ‘60's — in other words, coming of age at a time when the only gadget close to the Internet was in the science fiction serials and comic strips, when TV was in its embryonic stage and local stations featured cowboy hosts of children's series, such as "Sagebrush Sam," who went on to be New York's future Democrat Rep. Sam Stratton, and the only controversy in Major League baseball was whether one cheered for the Yankees or the fledgling Mets.
Without actually saying so, Pietrusza demonstrates the genuine fun he experienced in childhood with such relatively simple distractions as comic strips, library books, and his early passion for baseball — all of which led the budding author toward his eventual career as historian, editor, and scholar of political history.
At the hub of Pietrusza's youth in the blue-collar town of Amsterdam, New York, was the family and its ethnic community. Extended families were close personally and within proximity in their neighborhoods. The author offers several anecdotes of his people — "Polacks," as he calls them, a term used commonly before someone decided it was offensive and derogatory.
Put another way, anyone from Pietrusza's elderly relatives to Amsterdam's town drunk could count on the family when life took turns for the worse.
Much like Pat Buchanan recalling his more affluent youth in "Right From the Start," Pietrusza pours out his passion for the Roman Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council — and well before controversy became even more pronounced under the current Pope.
To Protestant friends who asked how the young Pietrusza could get through Mass without understanding a word of Latin, he simply displayed his St. Joseph's Missal and its translations of the liturgy and the priest's choreography. He also leaves the reader with no doubt that this form of Catholic worship brought him closer to God.
When Pope Pius XII died in October 1958, Pietrusza sensed something would change for the worse in his church and, in the author's eyes, it did. The Vatican II "reforms" made it far more difficult to attend Latin Mass instead of the contemporary "vernacular" worship, Mantilla veils worn by women were mothballed, and the tradition of Pietrusza's youth was, in his eyes, clearly violated.
In recalling his childhood in Amsterdam, Pietrusza pulls no punches. He came to love baseball, later edited "Total Baseball," but was not going to be scouted for anything he did on the playing field. Of his studies in high school and later college, the author makes it clear "I did well at what I liked" — which, of course, was the liberal arts education leading to his career.
At a time when "Friends," after 17 years, seems somehow alien to the current generation of TV viewers, this memoir may appear nothing short of ancient history to the millennial reader.
But, for readers of all ages, "Too Long Ago" breathes life into a time when young men and women coming of age had much with which to entertain themselves and to count on when the chips were down — and, in the process, they had fun.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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