A Lifetime in Every Moment

This extraordinarily eventful memoir includes the author's recollections of his early years in China as a member of a large missionary family, his adventures as an exchange student in Hitler's Germany, his capture during the Battle of the Bulge and his escape from a POW camp, recapture and liberation by Patton's Third Army. After the war Littell entered the world of publishing and eventually co-founded McDougal, Littell & Company, a textbook publisher that began operation in 1969 with four employees in a tiny office in Evanston, Ill., and went on to become a top educational publisher. The memoir is wide-ranging and candid: Littell recounts his sexual exploitation by older boys while a choirboy in his father's church, the effect of his sister's suicide on the family, his combat experiences as a GI in a poorly trained outfit, his tempestuous first marriage and his reconciliation with his father, an Episcopal bishop, after a 20-year estrangement. Business-oriented readers will find especially rewarding his account of McDougal, Littell's success despite serious setbacks. Photos. (Nov.)