Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life (First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition)

"An autobiography usually requires a justification.

The great autobiographies-those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams-were justified by their authors living in interesting times, harboring radically new ideas, or participating in great events.

Joseph Epstein qualifies on none of these counts. His life has been quiet, lucky in numerous ways, and far from dramatic.

But it has also been emblematic of the great changes in our country since World War II.

He grew up in a petit-bourgeois, Midwestern milieu, and the city of Chicago looms large in his life.

He drew a lucky ticket in the parent lottery and his was a happy boyhood spent on playgrounds and hanging around drug stores.

At high school dances, he was the rhumba king and at drive-in movies he was never allowed to go as far with girls as he so ardently desired.

At twenty-six, after two years in the army, he found himself married, the f