The vivid, suspenseful history books for which Adam Hochschild has become well known are only a portion of his work. All his life he has also been writing shorter pieces: about the writers he loves, about his unusual life story, and about his travels to far corners of the earth—four continents, for example, are included in this volume. Finding the Trapdoor collects the best of more than two decades' worth of such articles, all of them previously published in a wide variety of magazines, from Mother Jones to the Village Voice to the New York Review of Books. The topics covered range from a visit to Amazon Indians several days' travel from the nearest small town to a look at late 20th-century sex advice books to the story of how two of Hochschild's personal heroes once fought on opposite sides of a battle in the Russian Civil War.
Adam Hochschild's books include King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves; and Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son. He teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The Atlantic, and many other magazines.
"Clearly fascinated by the world beyond himself, Hochschild extracts the essences of Russia, El Salvador, South Africa, Senegal, Colombia and Mississippi 30 years after Freedom Summer. An enthralling excursion around the world and into the heart."
- Publisher's Weekly
"Wherever he takes you—to a combat zone in El Salvador, an anti-apartheid rally in South Africa, the claustrophobic apartments of Moscow—you will find the place lit up with gentle humor and a luminous moral intelligence.
- Barbara Ehrenreich
"A rich and rewarding adventure in the reading."
- Studs Terkel