In The Fly Swatter, Nicholas Dawidoff--bestselling author of The
Catcher Was a Spy--vividly reconstructs the life of his grandfather,
Alexander Gerschenkron-the Harvard professor who knew the most.
A fascinating character, Gerschenkron feuded with Vladimir Nabokov and
John Kenneth Galbraith, flirted with Marlene Dietrich, and played chess
with Marcel Duchamp and one-upped both Isiah Berlin and (allegedly) Ted
Williams. At Harvard, this celebrated polyglot was known as "The Great
Gerschenkron." He was an influential economic theorist who knew twenty
languages and so much about so many other things that he was offered
chairs in three departments. All this after beginning life with
traumatic dramatic escapes from the Bolsheviks (in 1920) and the Nazis
(in 1938). Riveting and eloquent, The Fly Swatter's most unusual
accomplishment is that it succeeds in telling the extraordinary story of
a man's soul.