Every Wrong Direction recreates and dissects the bitter education of
Dan Burt, an American émigré who never found a home in America. It
begins in the row homes of Jewish immigrants and working-class Italians
on the mean streets of 1950s South Philadelphia. Every Wrong Direction
follows the author from the rough, working-class childhood that groomed
him to be a butcher or charter boat captain, through America, Britain
and Saudi Arabia as student, lawyer, spy, culture warrior, and
expatriate, ending with a photo of his college rooms at St John's
College, Cambridge. Between this beginning and end, through a
Philadelphia commuter college, to Cambridge, then Yale Law School,
across the working to upper classes, three countries, and seven cities
over 43 years, it maps his pursuit of, realization, disillusionment with
and abandonment of America and the American Dream.
Praise for Dan Burt's previous memoir, You Think It Strange:
"Burt's early life was indeed a triumph of wit and will. He managed to
escape a world filled with violence and a culture that valued street
smarts over book smarts, all the while knowing that just about everyone
around him thought little of his prospects. That he made it out at all
is extraordinary. That he became a successful lawyer and writer is
virtually unimaginable." --Commonweal
"Dan Burt is a fine poet, and this memoir has all the sensitivity and
vigilance you might expect from a writer with such a background. But his
prose also has a robustness and documentary power that continually
startles and engages. As it combines these things, You Think It Strange
catches the strangeness of the world and makes it familiar."
--Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, 1999-2009
