Where We Lived: Essays on Places

“I feared my children and their children would never know about the lost worlds of our family – love, moral stands, disappointment, Christmas dinners, the ancient and ordinary sunlight that transported us like aliens from galaxies of the past. These galaxies not only existed but persisted despite the apathy of their inheritors. Consider this book a last will and testament, an attempt to stave off the probate of oblivion.” from the Foreword

"Henry Allen, one of the best deadline essayists in the business.” Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking

Intense. Mercurial. Bald. Bearded. Marine veteran of Vietnam. Feature writer and art critic at The Washington Post, 1970-2009 – awarded first prize for commentary by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (1992) and the Pulitzer Prize for criticism (2000). Among his books: Going Too Far Enough: American Culture at Century’s End (Smithsonian Institution Press), What It Felt Like: Living in the American Century (Pantheon), Fool’s Mercy: a novel (Houghton-Mifflin), and The Museum of Lost Air, poetry (Dryad Press). Allen has written for the New York Review of Books, New Yorker, Paris Review, Vogue, Wilson Quarterly and currently reviews books for The Wall Street Journal. He has been a guest on radio and television, e.g., Charlie Rose Show, Discovery Channel, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Stephen Colbert and has given talks in venues at Princeton University, University of Michigan (Graham Hovey Lecture), Pennsylvania State University, American University, and F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference.