Man of the Hour

by Peter Blauner

Book Overview

When David Fitzgerald, a teacher in a Brooklyn high school, keeps his students from boarding a bus that turns out to have a bomb on it, he becomes the emblematic modern hero -- the President mentions... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316038172
• ISBN13: 9780316038171
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 420 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 13 years and up

Customer Reviews

Read this.........

{Man of the Hour} Man of the Hour was a great book! The personality's of the characters seem so lively and real. You can visualize every detail in this book. David Fitzgerald, the main character, is the center of this book. After saving a student's life everything seems to surround him. He is soon publicized on TV and in a president's announcement affiliated with his heroic courage of saving a student's life. He seems so "air born" after everyone nation-wide knows of his name. Soon however David's life is about to be turned around, he becomes FBI's main victim of the bomb plot. I definitely recommend that you read this book if you are into reading action and fictional modern events.

Blauner is one of the best!

I'm ashamed to see that the one-star reviewer is from London, right on my doorstep. Blauner's deft characterizations - the Palestinian girl battling between the strict regime of her family and the new influences and freedoms of America, the teacher basking in the glory of appearing as a hero to his son - are superbly handled and were obviously lost on that reader. The others, thankfully, seemed to have picked up on the fact that Blauner is one of the most skilful, intelligent writers coming out of the USA right now. I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer from Austin who can't understand why Blauner's not more popular. He should be up there matching Grisham's and Cornwell's sales - but for my money his writing has more intelligence and pathos than both.

Entertaining and thought-provoking

easily one of the most interesting books Ive read this year and one of themost exciting too. Great characters, compelling plot, good writing.

Sharp and unpredictable

With "Man of the Hour," Peter Blauner continues to prove what a very, very good writer he is. Although his books are regularly categorized as "thrillers," they are much more than that. Quite simply, they're great novels-taut, insightful studies into what people do upon finding themselves in extreme circumstances. He certainly provides that again here. His reluctant hero, David Fitzgerald, is as fallible as any of us. And his villains-Mideast terrorists who could've so easily become cartoons in any lesser writer's hands, are complex, their motives understandable.The result is at once thought-provoking AND a great read. Blauner is one of the best.

A Great Novel!!

In these jaded times it sounds corny and false to say that a writer just keeps getting better and better, but in Peter Blauner's case, it's the absolute truth. Although his novels have the pacing of thrillers, I consider them to be the very best urban fiction of our age. From "Slow Motion Riot" to "Man of the Hour", Blauner has brilliantly dramatized the perils and rewards of life in urban America in a way that makes the territory his alone. If you dig a great story...if characters you'll never forget are your thing, make "Man of the Hour" the next book you read.