This is the memoir of science fiction grandmaster Asimov, a paradoxical genius who wrote of travel to the stars yet refused to fly in airplanes, who imagined alien universes and vast galactic civilizations while staying home to write, and who compulsively authored more than 450 books, yet still found time to share his ideas with some of the great minds of our century. Including many rare photographs, it was the 1995 Hugo Award winner for best work of nonfiction.

Ira Ringold, a Jew from Newark (Philip Roth's home town), joins the communist party during World War II. Back home, he becomes a radio celebrity and marries an aging movie queen named Eve Frame. The marriage ends in disaster when Eve writes a book called I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, exposing Ira's secret life and making him vulnerable to the American anti-communist frenzy. Ultimately, he is destroyed. Like AMERICAN PASTORAL (1997), this novel is partly narrated by Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, and seems to be based on Roth's own troubled relationship with the actress Claire Bloom, to whom he was married for five years--and who had already written her own scathing book about the marriage. I MARRIED A COMMUNIST was a New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

This historical novel covers the long and fruitful collaboration between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, telling the story from a variety of viewpoints that include not only the two principals but Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who served as their guide, and York, one of Clark's slaves.