The World Is My Home ─ A Memoir

James A. Michener was “a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, energetic, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart” (The New York Times Book Review). Now, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this literary legend’s birth, here is the story of his remarkable life, told by the man himself.

In this exceptional memoir, James Michener describes the people, events, and ideas that have shaped his life. Moving backward and forward across time, he writes about the many strands of his experience: his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his liberal credo and his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life. Here at last is the real James Michener, plainspoken, wise, and enormously sympathetic, a man who can truly say, “The world is my home.”

“A sweepingly interesting life . . . Whether he’s having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener’s world is a place and a time worth reading about.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“There are splendid yarns about his wartime doings in the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener himself–analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer, chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers.”
–Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Michener’s own life makes one of his most engaging tales–a classic American success story.”
–Entertainment Weekly

James A. Michener was one of the world’s most popular writers, the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the bestselling novels The Source, Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Caribbean, and Caravans, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.