Happy days : my mother, my father, my sister and me

Acclaimed 60 Minutes commentator and true-crime author Shana Alexander turns her journalist & rsquo;s eye to her own unconventional family & mdash;and herself & mdash;in this fascinating, moving memoir Shana Alexander spent most of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents. Milton Ager was a famous songwriter whose creations included & ldquo;Ain & rsquo;t She Sweet & rdquo; and & ldquo;Happy Days Are Here Again. & rdquo; Cecelia Ager was a film critic and Variety columnist. They were a glamorous Jazz Age couple that moved in charmed circles with George and Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, and Jerome Kern. They remained together for fifty-seven years, and yet they lived separate lives. This wise, witty, unflinchingly candid memoir is also a revealing account of Alexander & rsquo;s own life, from her successful career as a writer and national-news commentator to her troubled marriages and emotionally wrenching love affairs. She shares insights about growing up with a cold, hypercritical mother, her relationship with her younger sister, the suicide of her adopted daughter, and her reconciliation with her parents after a twenty-year estrangement. & ldquo;I had to do a lot of detective work to uncover the truth about my parents & rsquo; lives, & rdquo; Alexander said. & ldquo;I knew almost nothing about them as people. But by the end they really did become my best friends. & rdquo Acclaimed 60 Minutes commentator and true-crime author Shana Alexander turns her journalist{u2019}s eye to her own unconventional family{u2014}and herself{u2014}in this fascinating, moving memoir Shana Alexander spent most of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents. Milton Ager was a famous songwriter whose creations included ?Ain{u2019}t She Sweet? and ?Happy Days Are Here Again.? Cecelia Ager was a film critic and Variety columnist. They were a glamorous Jazz Age couple that moved in charmed circles with George and Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, and Jerome Kern. They remained together for fifty-seven years, and yet they lived separate lives. This wise, witty, unflinchingly candid memoir is also a revealing account of Alexander{u2019}s own life, from her successful career as a writer and national-news commentator to her troubled marriages and emotionally wrenching love affairs. She shares insights about growing up with a cold, hypercritical mother, her relationship with her younger sister, the suicide of her adopted daughter, and her reconciliation with her parents after a twenty-year estrangement. ?I had to do a lot of detective work to uncover the truth about my parents{u2019} lives,? Alexander said. ?I knew almost nothing about them as people. But by the end they really did become my best friends.? Shana Alexander spent much of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents, Milton and Cecelia Ager. The eccentric fifty-seven-year Ager marriage had begun at the start of the Jazz Age, 1922, when twenty-nine-year-old Milton, already a prince of Tin Pan Alley, met Cecelia, a chic twenty-year-old California blonde. Milton went on to compose such classics as "Ain't She Sweet?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again." Cecelia's lethal columns in Variety on the fashionable and fatuous eventually led to stints as a Hollywood screenwriter and a celebrated Manhattan movie critic. The Agers moved in a charmed circle that included George and Ira Gershwin and Dorothy Parker. But they gave new meaning to the term private life. Husband and wife were complete opposites, pursuing different tastes and passions, even living on different timetables - she by day, he by night - and occupying separate quarters in the hotel suites and furnished apartments they called home. Happy Days is literally the book Shana Alexander was born to write. Along the way, we get a startlingly honest account of Alexander's own life, professional and personal: her successful career as a writer and commentator for Life, Newsweek, and 60 Minutes, counterpointed by the story of her troubled marriages and dramatic love affairs. **Acclaimed __60 Minutes__ commentator and true-crime author Shana Alexander turns her journalist's eye to her own unconventional family—and herself—in this fascinating, moving memoir** Shana Alexander spent most of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents. Milton Ager was a famous songwriter whose creations included "Ain't She Sweet" and "Happy Days Are Here Again." Cecelia Ager was a film critic and columnist. They were a glamorous Jazz Age couple that moved in charmed circles with George and Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, and Jerome Kern. They remained together for fifty-seven years, and yet they lived separate lives. This wise, witty, unflinchingly candid memoir is also a revealing account of Alexander's own life, from her successful career as a writer and national-news commentator to her troubled marriages and emotionally wrenching love affairs. She shares insights about growing up with a cold, hypercritical mother, her relationship with her younger sister, the suicide of her adopted daughter, and her reconciliation with her parents after a twenty-year estrangement. "I had to do a lot of detective work to uncover the truth about my parents' lives," Alexander said. "I knew almost nothing about them as people. But by the end they really did become my best friends."