Words and Worlds: From Autobiography to Zippers

In this candid and bluntly humorous collection of essays on a wide range of topics, Lurie begins with a portrait of her life at Radcliffe during World War II when the smartest women in the country were treated like second-class citizens, the most scholarly among them expected to work in factories to support the war effort. She moves on to her unheralded, clumsy attempts and near failure to be a writer and, finally having reached a level of recognition, the good fortune of forming close rela...