MixedCommentaryIn the hands of this undeniably gifted writer, such raw materials ought to have made for an illuminating and entertaining story. One is a bit puzzled, therefore, by the degree to which A Life in the Twentieth Century manages to be neither. Schlesinger accomplishes none of the tasks of an autobiographer: he provides no account of his inner life, tells us little about the lives of others, and casts no new light on the events of his time ... Readers are thus left to figure things out for themselves—and it must be said that the pieces Schlesinger has given them do not add up to an especially attractive portrait.
