HOTEL KID: A Times Square Childhood

This literary memoir, ideal for chuckling at with a glass of port near a roaring fireplace while surrounded by sleepy grandchildren and old photos, is perfect for those who long for the way things were. For New Yorkers of many decades and for the younger set who push strollers along upper Madison Avenue to church on Sundays, Lewis—the founder of a New Mexico memoir-writing workshop—produces pages of carefully honed prose about his childhood growing up in the landmark Taft Hotel, where his father was general manager. The nostalgic goings-on unfold in the Times Square hotel and in the New York suburbs during the 1930s, WWII and the postwar boom years. With an appealingly innate whimsy, the author dutifully tries to provide psychological insight into human motives ("If power corrupts, hot fudge corrupts absolutely"). The book is as much a family history as a time capsule, as Lewis chronicles the menu from his father's bar mitzvah dinner and tells of collecting victory stamps with the hope of turning them in for a war bond. Lewis, who is kind in print to his family and those he knew, wraps up his book with a contrasting snapshot of his old Taft Hotel home in its new incarnation as the Michelangelo, and speaks with distaste of the "Roy Rogers Family Restaurant and TGIF on the corner." Sweet and unchallenging, this is a friendly portrait of a bygone Big Apple. Photos. (Aug.)