<DIV>Michael Thomas's debut, <I>Man Gone Down</I> won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a <I>New York Times</I> Top Ten Book of 2008. His extraordinary new work traces the lives of men in his family against the backdrop of the last century-and-a-half in America. From Reconstruction, to Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and beloved, trauma and recovery, race and de-racination, soccer and the Boston Red Sox in a beautifully unique memoir.<BR><BR>The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot's <I>Little Gidding</I>: ?If you came at night like a broken king,” and the work ponders the process of being broken. Reminiscent of James Baldwin's <I>The Fire Next Time</I>, Thomas delivers a series of vignettes reaching back to his grandfather who, though trained as a pharmacist could never find work as one; his father, president of his class at BU, who was an unsuccessful businessman and failed parent; to his estranged brother's lawlessness; and his own two sons' relatively privileged lives in Brooklyn today. Every page rings with the effects of America's struggle with race, class, wealth, and education, while also offering an intimate look at the creative mind under stress?a brave, meticulous articulation of madness.</DIV>