Champagne and Meatballs: An Autobiography of Sorts

By Bert Whyte and Larry Hannant

Active for over 40 years with the Communist Party of Canada, Bert Whyte was a journalist, an underground
party organizer and soldier during World War II, and a press correspondent in Beijing and Moscow. But any notion of him as a Communist Party hack would be mistaken. Whyte never let leftist ideology get in the way of a great yarn. In Champagne and Meatballs--a memoir written not long before his death in Moscow in 1984--we meet a cigar-smoking rogue who was at least as happy at a pool hall as at a political meeting. His stories of bumming across Canada in the 1930s, of combat and comaraderie at the front lines in World War II, and of surviving as a dissident in troubled times make for compelling reading.

The manuscript of Champagne and Meatballs was brought to light and edited by historian Larry Hannant, who has written a fascinating and thought-provoking introduction to the text. Brash, irreverent, informative, and entertaining, Whyte's tale is history and biography accompanied by a wink of his eye--the left one, of course.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1926836081
• ISBN13: 9781926836089
• Release Date: February 2011
• Publisher: Canadian Committee on Labour History
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"