The talented of a popular show business family survived World War II as a hero pilot, physically intact but emotionally...

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THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY

The talented of a popular show business family survived World War II as a hero pilot, physically intact but emotionally shaken. In his post-war months he appeared at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, in 1948, to renounce his American citizenship and proclaim himself as the first ""world citizen"". For ten subsequent years, he refused successive official identities, traveled from country to country visiting public officials and stimulating grass roots' opinion in an attempt to demonstrate the indignity of a world dominated by red tape and bureaucratic paperwork. His supranationalism led to his association with leading intellectuals of three continents, this despite frequent periods of incarceration in continental jails. When he ""retired"" it was with the hope that he had become a symbol to inspire others to create a pattern of world harmony and understanding. Lampooned by the press as an idealistic dreamer, spoken of as a showoff in comic-opera utopianism, he emerges from this autobiography as sincerely convinced of his own goals and reasoning. One may disagree, but accept the validity of his ideals. Furthermore, the book has everything to recommend it as an adventure story, a travelogue, a study of mob and individual psychology, and a moving chronicle of one man's passionate adherence to his convictions.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1961

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