Beautifully written…sharply detailed recollections…compelling, both touching and funny…Holland writes with breezy elegance and a sly wit.-New York Times Book Review

Acclaimed writer Barbara Holland, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer has called "a national treasure," finally tells her own story with this atmospheric account of a postwar American childhood. When All the World Was Young is Holland's account of growing up in Washington, D.C., during the 1940s and '50s, and is a deliciously subversive, sensitive journey into her past.
Mixing tales of an autocratic stepfather, a brilliant, reclusive mother, and a houseful of siblings with jump-rope rhymes and dangerous sled runs, teachers both wise and weird, and a child's-eye view of war, Holland gives readers a unique and sharp-eyed look at history and the world of childhood as it used to be.
Barbara Holland is the author of fourteen previous books, most recently Gentlemen's Blood, and has written for Smithsonian, Glamour, Playboy, the Utne Reader, Redbook, Seventeen, and the Washington Post, among many others. She lives on a mountain in the Virginia Blue Ridge.
A Washington Post bestseller
"Wise, funny, haunting and thoroughly grown-up…Holland…has a keen memory of the conventions and customs of that time, and she brings them back to life with clarity and affection …She seems to be able to write knowledgeably about almost anything she pleases…[A] splendid book."-Washington Post Book World
"Ms. Holland, a shrewd, witty writer, casts a sharp backward glance at America the day before yesterday, when fathers ruled with an iron fist, children memorized lots of poetry and a girl could take pride knowing that her hometown would be bombed first when the Russians let fly with the H-bomb."-New York Times
"Imagine Lauren Bacall narrating Tristram Shandy and you get a sense of Holland's When All the World Was Young…One perfect eyebrow cocked, Holland looks back at the war years through the lens of our own times and dispatches past and present with a delicious, wry clarity."-Chicago Tribune