Hello to All That
A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An off-the-wall, heartbreaking, and often hilarious memoir of a correspondent reporting from the front lines while also battling his lifelong nemesis-chronic depression
His own chemistry was his worst enemy, and it took John Falk to some very strange places-from Garden City, Long Island, to sniper-infested Sarajevo during the Bosnian bloodbath. But through it all, in the face of chronic depression, he kept reaching out for the life he'd always wanted. Hello to All That is his story-crazed, comic, poignant, suspenseful, hopeful.
Falk was an average Long Island kid, until depression left him ashamed and trapped behind an impenetrable chemical wall. Barely surviving on "chin-up" tips from his big, loyal, boisterous family, Falk tried to fight his disease-or hide it. But by twenty-four, he was alone, living on books by war correspondents, their adventures his only escape. Then he found a blue pill called Zoloft and set out on a mission to make his own name as a correspondent during one of the most dangerous conflicts in recent memory. Falk's journey has never been predictable, and neither is his moving, outrageous, and sometimes frightening memoir.
Here is the riveting tale of a man's lifelong battle-the struggle to defeat his greatest enemy and to connect, cure himself, and finally live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Afflicted with chronic depression from childhood, Falk thought his troubles were over when he discovered Zoloft at age 25. But it wasn't until he chose the hazardous career of war journalism in Bosnia in the early 1990s that he escaped his "pointless" life. In this raucous, zany memoir, the author explains how he chose that profession after reading books of extraordinary lives and deciding adventure would restore him to life. Courting chaos and death in a place where sanity matters little would, he thought, do the trick. War reporters were "free agents who answered to no one and lived each day like it was their last." Falk intercuts wild, amusing scenes of his troubled 1980s Long Island youth with the uncontrolled mayhem of Sarajevo, where his instincts as a reporter often failed him and got him into tricky situations (e.g., being mistaken for a spy). However, while maniacally juggling his meds and daily NBC radio stories, he experienced the futility of war and matured as a man and a journalist. Falk's wise, comical testament ends on a joyous note of a marriage and a Details magazine article that morphed into a Peabody Award winning HBO movie, Shot Through the Heart, making his story an unlikely personal triumph over depression.
