A third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers Angela's Ashes and 'Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy long years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City! Frank McCourt arrived in New York as a young, impoverished and idealistic Irish boy -- but one who crucially had an American passport, having been born in Brooklyn. He didn't know what he wanted except to stop being hungry and to better himself. On the subway he watched students carrying books. He saw how they read and underlined and wrote things in the margin and he liked the look of this very much. He joined the New York Public Library and every night when he came back from his hotel work he would sit up reading the great novels. Building his confidence and his determination, he talked his way into NYU and gained a literature degree and so began a teaching career that was to last 30 years, working in New York's public high schools. Frank estimates that he probably taught 12,000 children during this time and it is on this relationship between teacher and student that he reflects in 'Teacher Man', the third in his series of memoirs. The New York high school is a restless, noisy and unpredictable place and Frank believes that it was his attempts to control and cajole these thousands of children into learning and achieving something for themselves that turned him into a writer. At least once a day someone would put up their hand and shout 'Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, tell us about Ireland, tell us about how poor you were !' Through sharing his own life with these kids he learnt the power of narrative storytelling, and out of the invaluable experience of holding 12,000 people's attention came 'Angela's Ashes'. Frank McCourt was a legend in such schools as Stuyvesant High School -- long before he became the figure he is now he would receive letters from former students telling him how much his teaching influenced and inspired them -- and now in 'Teacher Man' he shares his reminiscences of those 30 years and reveals how they led to his own success with 'Angela's Ashes' and "Tis'.

About the Author

Frank McCourt's first book, 'Angela's Ashes', won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He taught in various New York City high schools and in city colleges. His sequel to 'Angela's Ashes', "Tis', continued its predecessor's huge success. He lives with his wife in New York.

Prizes

/ Key title / Includes PS Section A third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers Angela's Ashes and 'Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy long years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City! / Tremendously successful in hardback, selling over 100,000 copies in the UK and Ireland. / Stunning new Harper Perennial editions of 'Angela's Ashes' and "Tis' have been reissued ahead of this third installment of the memoir. / Frank McCourt's first book, 'Angela's Ashes', won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it has sold almost 4 million copies in its HarperCollins editions alone and tens of millions worldwide. / Will be given a stunning new cover treatment.

Reviews

The phenomenally best-selling author on the value of teaching-and the value of storytelling in teaching. With a big tour. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

'McCourt has a compulsion to tell us the story of his life, but he does it so well -- modulating beautifully from ventriloquistically exact repro teen-speak to rhapsodic meditations on his midlife crisis -- that one couldn't possibly want him to stop. I wish I could have been in one of his classes.' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times 'This memoir about teaching is unlike any other I have read: relatively mundane events and incidents shine against that backdrop of that pathetic, abused child.' Francis Gilbert, Sunday Telegraph 'Damn entertaining!McCourt is a master racouteur.' Washington Post 'McCourt's many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too.' Publishers Weekly 'As good as writing gets about teaching and learning and finding yourself through writing.' USA Today 'Heart-warming.' New York Times 'McCourt has an undeniable gift for turning a phrase.' Boston Globe

This final memoir in the trilogy that started with Angela's Ashes and continued in 'Tis focuses almost exclusively on McCourt's 30-year teaching career in New York City's public high schools, which began at McKee Vocational and Technical in 1958. His first day in class, a fight broke out and a sandwich was hurled in anger. McCourt immediately picked it up and ate it. On the second day of class, McCourt's retort about the Irish and their sheep brought the wrath of the principal down on him. All McCourt wanted to do was teach, which wasn't easy in the jumbled bureaucracy of the New York City school system. Pretty soon he realized the system wasn't run by teachers but by sterile functionaries. "I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classrooms only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms, teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their forms, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, adjust myself to their programs and courses of study." As McCourt matured in his job, he found ingenious ways to motivate the kids: have them write "excuse notes" from Adam and Eve to God; use parts of a pen to define parts of a sentence; use cookbook recipes to get the students to think creatively. A particularly warming and enlightening lesson concerns a class of black girls at Seward Park High School who felt slighted when they were not invited to see a performance of Hamlet, and how they taught McCourt never to have diminished expectations about any of his students. McCourt throws down the gauntlet on education, asserting that teaching is more than achieving high test scores. It's about educating, about forming intellects, about getting people to think. McCourt's many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too. (Nov. 15) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.