The Age of Astonishment

”[Morris] does a superb job of recounting a life amid a series of significant decades. His imaginative ‘mongrel’ approach—a mix of…biography, history, reportage, memoir, autobiography, and, when the record runs thin, speculation that flirts with fiction—is successful. An entertaining combination of domestic and world history.” – Kirkus, Starred Review
“Novelist Bill Morris delivers a poignant biography of his grandfather, John Morris, a University of Georgia philologist. Though Morris touches on the technological and political upheavals of his grandfather’s lifetime, he pays the greatest attention to racial issues, noting that John was born on a Virginia plantation in 1863 and died in 1955, the same year Emmett Till was murdered. While some of his peers dove into Lost Cause fanaticism, John saw slavery as evil and once drove his daughter to a farmhouse where a Black man had been lynched because ‘he wanted her to know about [it] and think about [it] and never forget.’ An immersive and moving portrait of a quietly decent man and his monumental era.” * Publishers Weekly *
“He had the conviction to live life the way he wanted. Morris is now spiritually connected to a grandfather captured in an old picture.” * The Athens Banner-Herald *

Bill Morris is the author of the novels Motor City and Motor City Burning, also available from Pegasus Books. He is currently a staff writer with the online literary magazine the Millions, and his writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, LA Weekly, Popular Mechanics, and numerous other newspapers and magazines. Bill grew up in Detroit and now lives in New York City.

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