We see days and nights spent developing storage batteries, the phonograph industry, application of Portland cement, moving pictures, etc. Not as an abstract genius, but as a man, Edison is made known and his personal human side is set before us. ” Includes many portraits and illustrations.

In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller–known to friends and family as Bobo–grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt.

ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD FIRST AMERICAN EDITION THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK 1949 AH rights reserved Second Printing PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS ONE EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS 1 TWO HOME AND HOLIDAYS 18 THREE EDUCATION SECOND STAGE 32 FOUR LATER EDUCATION 51 FIVE RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS 65 CHAPTER ONE EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS I was born in the little town of Kaysersberg, in Upper Alsace, on January 14, 1875, in the small house with the turret, which you see on the left as you leave the upper end of the town. My father lived there as pastor, and teacher of the little evangelical congregation, for the majority of the inhabitants were Catholics. Since Alsace became French there has been no pastor, and our little home with the turret now houses the police. I was the second child, following a sister who was my elder by a year. It was from Kaysersberg that a famous mediaeval preacher took his surname, viz. Geiler von Kaysersberg 1445-1510 who used to preach in Strassburg-Cathe dral He was born at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, but after his fathers death was brought up in Kaysersberg by his grandfather, and when a boy I used to pride my self not a little on having been born in the town where Geiler von Kaysersberg had lived, and in a famous wine year, for the season of 1875 was an extraordinarily good one for the vines. 1 MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH When I was six months old my father left Kaysers berg and settled at Giinsbaeh, in the Miinstertal, as pastor. This was my mothers home-district, for she was the daughter of Pastor Schillinger, of Miihlbach, higher up the valley. I was a very sickly child when we moved to Giinsbach. On the occasion of my fathers induction my mother had decked me out as finely as she could in a white frock with coloured ribbons, but not one of the pastors wives that had come to the ceremony ventured to compliment her on her thin and yellow-faced baby, and none of them went beyond embarrassed commonplaces. So at last my mother she has often told me about it could restrain herself no longer she fled with me in her arms to her bedroom, and there wept hot tears over me. On one occasion they actually thought I was dead, but the milk from neighbour Leopolds cow, together with the excellent Giinsbach air, worked wonders for me from my second year onwards I improved marvel lously, and became a strong and healthy boy, and in the manse at Giinsbach I passed a delightful childhood with the companionship of three sisters and one brother. A sixth child, a daughter named Emma, was lost to my parents by a premature death. My first recollection is of seeing the devil As soon as I was three or four years old, I was allowed to go to church every Sunday, and I used to look forward to this the whole week through. I can still feel on my lips our servant-girls cotton glove, which she used to hold over my mouth when I yawned or sang too loud. And now RECOLLECTIONS every Sunday I noticed in a bright frame by the side of the organ a shaggy face which was continually turning about and looking down into the church. So long as the organ was playing and the singing going on it was visible, but as soon as my father was praying at the altar it dis appeared. When the playing and singing began again it reappeared, but as soon as my father began his sermon it was again lost to sight, to show itself once more for the closing hymn and voluntary. This is the devil that is looking down into the church I said to myself, c but as soon as father begins with Gods Word, he has to make himself scarce This weekly dose of visible theology gave quite a distinctive tone to my childish piety.

more authentic for a new generation of young women than, say, the 1971 cautionary tale about drugs, Go Ask Alice. "-Susan Carpenter, LA Times "Dark, funny and touching. "-boingboing. net "Cringingly confessional, persistently desperate, yet often uproariously funny. All rendered and packaged in labor-intensive psychedelic outsider graphic design. An overdue riposte to the bludgeoning morality of the fabricated Go Ask Alice. "-Doug Harvey, LA Weekly "By turns fierce, funny, heartbreaking and wise, Jolene Siana's Go Ask Ogre burns onto the page in an intense collage of words and images that together create a portrait of a gifted young woman fighting to hang on to her own life and choosing an unlikely-but strangely suitable-ally for her battle. "-Caroline Kettlewell, author of Skin Game "Amidst the cultural and political corruption of the late 1980s, seeking and artistic teens like Jolene Siana found cathartic solace in aggressive and so-called 'morbid' bands like Skinny Puppy. That she persevered with the help of music that parents, preachers, and politicians condemned, but rarely tried to understand, is a moving lesson. "-Alan Rapp, editor of The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon and Dan Eldon: The Art of Life.