Swimming Across : A Memoir, by Andrew S. Grove

(0446679704)

The author was CEO of Intel in the early '90s and Time's Man of the Year in 1997. But I hadn't remembered hearing of him before picking up this book.

The man has lived through some of those famously interesting times. He was born in Hungary in 1936, a non-religious Jew at a bad time in history. Since I knew nothing about the history of Hungary, this book gave me a primer on the events of the middle of the 20th century in that country from World War I through the mid-50s under Communism.

Grove (who was Andris Grof in Hungary) escaped from Hungary after the Hungarian revolt against Russian Communism was put down with Russian tanks. He simply (well, not really so simply) walked across the border into Austria. And he's never gone back. He came to America and built a life for himself. Eventually his parents were able to immigrate as well.

But that part of his story is the end of his exciting tale. It's a life story worth reading. Very speedy, simple reading, lots of pictures of himself as a child and young adult, which is unusual. Well-paced. Don't think it will be a classic, but it is eye-opening.