Title

The road to home: my life and times

Description

Vartan Gregorian's tale starts with a childhood of poverty, deprivation, and enchantment in the Armenian quarter of Tabriz, Iran. As the world reeled from depression into six years of warfare, his mother died, leaving his grandmother Voski as the loving staff of his life. Through unlettered example and instruction, he learned about the first of his many worlds: the strenuousness required for survival, the fairy tale that explained existence, the place and name of his own star in night sky, how to maneuver as a member of a Christian minority in a benevolent Muslim kingdom, the beauty and inspiration of Armenian Church liturgy, the exciting foreign world of ten-year-old American westerns, the richness of life on the streets. "He learned the magic of the innumerable worlds he could find in books - and he wanted to visit them all. As the spell books cast on him grew more powerful, so did the constraints imposed by his father's indifference to his dreams of redirecting his life through learning." "So, one day when he was fifteen years old, he presented himself at an Armenian-French lycee in Beirut, Lebanon, to start the arduous task of becoming a person of learning and consequence." "This book tells not only how he reached that school but also about the many people who guided, supported, taught, and helped him on a journey from Tabriz to Beirut to Palo Alto to Tenafly to London, from Stanford University to San Francisco State University to the University of Texas at Austin to the University of Pennsylvania to the New York Public Library to Brown University, and, currently, to the presidency of Carnegie Corporation of New York."--BOOK JACKET.

Identifier

1151268

068480834X

Creator

Gregorian, Vartan

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

2003

Program air date: June 29, 2003

Publisher

Simon & Schuster

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Front and back endpapers include biographical information on the author's family and career and a brief summary of the history of Persia/Iran since 1841. Other notes refer to the impact of Saadi's teachings on him, his poor relationship with his father, his close relationship with his sister, his escape into reading and literature, particularly Shakespeare's works, his move to Beirut from Iran against his father's wishes but with the support of his grandmother. Simon Vratzian, the last prime minister of the Armenian Republic, is credited with changing the author's life. He encouraged Gregorian to enroll in college and took him on as his assistant. Lengthy notes on Gregorian's career describe his arrival in the U.S., his intense studies at Stanford, his progressive westernization, his marriage, the birth of his son, his trip to England to begin research on Afghanistan, his trip to Afghanistan via India, where he was outraged by the poverty and the slums of Karachi and Delhi. Other notes cover his studies on the history of Armenia at San Francisco State University, the impact of Martin Luther King's writings on him, his move to the University of Texas at Austin, the publication of his book on modern Afghanistan, Gregorian's subsequent appointments first as a history professor, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and finally provost at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1981 Gregorian became the president of the New York Public Library. Notes on his fundraising activities there relate anecdotes about Katherine Hepburn, Mrs. Vincent Astor, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Also noted is the author's service on the Board of the Gates Learning Foundation and the Board of Aga Khan University in Karachi. -- Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book.

Subject

"Gregorian, Vartan."

"Educators--United States--Biography."

"College presidents--United States--Biography."

"Armenian Americans--Biography."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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