THE ROAD TO HOME: My Life and Times

In this rags-to-riches memoir, Gregorian explains how he went from a childhood in a poor section of Tabriz, Iran, to become president of the New York Public Library and, later, the president of Brown University. Now the president of the Carnegie Corporation, Gregorian did travel the time-worn, conventional path of hard work and sheer grit, but he also had the dedicated help of friends and the fortuitous aid of strangers. Gregorian is uncommonly generous in acknowledging these blessings, yet his dominant tone of gratitude and grace doesn't preclude settling some scores, especially with regard to his candidacy for president of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was provost from 1978 to 1981. The book's detail is daunting—listing books Gregorian read, courses he took, movies he saw, papers he wrote and women he dated—but the author's educational history is educational in and of itself. A polyglot, "intoxicated with reading" and steeped in the Middle East's intricate, tangled saga, Gregorian opens a doorway to history and to Persian and Armenian literature. As he achieves his well-merited and much-honored success, the book's early vibrancy and immediacy dwindle into an archival record, covering speeches, fund-raising dinners, finances, bureaucratic details and the minutiae of administering large institutions. Still, on the way to Park Avenue, Gregorian shows readers other worlds (e.g., Beirut when it resembled Paris; Kandahar and Kabul before the Taliban) and sees more familiar worlds (e.g., New York, San Francisco, Paris, Moscow) with a newcomer's sense of wonder, eyes so fresh that he tries to eat his first banana without peeling it. (June 6)