Leaving Home: A Memoir

Funny men don't necessarily have funny childhoods. Art Buchwald had to find his humor the hard way. In this poignant memoir, Buchwald writes with intimacy and candor about his early years— of a life constantly on the move and in the company of strangers. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother were separated. He tells of a childhood that took him from a Seventh-Day Adventist shelter to New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum to a series of foster homes— all before the age of fifteen. It was an experience that forever molded him. How he negotiated the rocky path from an orphanage dining hall to the best table at Maxim's in Paris is a memorable story from a man who made America laugh for more than forty years.