ISHMAEL BEAH
Tuesday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m.

Even before it was picked up and given sudden, high visibility as a "featured book" by Starbucks, young, Sierra Leone-born Ishmeal Beah's extraordinary account, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux), was being read and raved over by those with early opportunities, from the editor who first found it to others such as Steve Coll, Jeannette Walls, and now reviewers everywhere. "A Long Way Gone is one of the most important war stories of our generation. The arming of children is among the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so little of it because the children themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage. Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. We ignore his message at our peril." - Sebastian Junger. "This is a wrenching, beautiful, and mesmerizing tale. Beah's amazing saga provides a haunting lesson about how gentle folks can be capable of great brutalities as well as goodness and courage. It will leave you breathless." - Walter Isaacson.

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