Critical Communication: A Memoir, reviewed by John A. Lent

With that out of the way, we can talk about this book.From the beginning, in the preface, Mosco alerts us that his memoir is different from others: shorter, to avoid overwriting and bloating with details; generous, in that, as he writes, "it is not my intention to settle scores, pick fights, or dress up my life with the lurid details that might briefly enliven the text only to diminish the more core of the story" (xxi); and structured, around the theme of critical communication, with occasional dips into major times in his life.Mosco's accounts of growing up in an Italian family in a threeroom tenement apartment in New York's Little Italy, and how it shaped his lifelong values and attitudes, hit a chord with this reviewer, also of Italian descent, who grew up amidst small town poverty.Mosco's recounting of "living without," inventing and organizing his own games, taking "sponge baths" in the kitchen sink for lack of a tub, and enduring cold winter nights with just the heat