Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace [Hardcover]

John Falk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2004

An off-the-wall, heartbreaking, and often hilarious memoir of a correspondent reporting from the front lines while also battling his lifelong nemesis-chronic depression

His own chemistry was his worst enemy, and it took John Falk to some very strange places-from Garden City, Long Island, to sniper-infested Sarajevo during the Bosnian bloodbath. But through it all, in the face of chronic depression, he kept reaching out for the life he'd always wanted. Hello to All That is his story-crazed, comic, poignant, suspenseful, hopeful.

Falk was an average Long Island kid, until depression left him ashamed and trapped behind an impenetrable chemical wall. Barely surviving on "chin-up" tips from his big, loyal, boisterous family, Falk tried to fight his disease-or hide it. But by twenty-four, he was alone, living on books by war correspondents, their adventures his only escape. Then he found a blue pill called Zoloft and set out on a mission to make his own name as a correspondent during one of the most dangerous conflicts in recent memory. Falk's journey has never been predictable, and neither is his moving, outrageous, and sometimes frightening memoir.

Here is the riveting tale of a man's lifelong battle-the struggle to defeat his greatest enemy and to connect, cure himself, and finally live.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Afflicted with chronic depression from childhood, Falk thought his troubles were over when he discovered Zoloft at age 25. But it wasn't until he chose the hazardous career of war journalism in Bosnia in the early 1990s that he escaped his "pointless" life. In this raucous, zany memoir, the author explains how he chose that profession after reading books of extraordinary lives and deciding adventure would restore him to life. Courting chaos and death in a place where sanity matters little would, he thought, do the trick. War reporters were "free agents who answered to no one and lived each day like it was their last." Falk intercuts wild, amusing scenes of his troubled 1980s Long Island youth with the uncontrolled mayhem of Sarajevo, where his instincts as a reporter often failed him and got him into tricky situations (e.g., being mistaken for a spy). However, while maniacally juggling his meds and daily NBC radio stories, he experienced the futility of war and matured as a man and a journalist. Falk's wise, comical testament ends on a joyous note of a marriage and a Details magazine article that morphed into a Peabody Award–winning HBO movie, Shot Through the Heart, making his story an unlikely personal triumph over depression.
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From Booklist

As an adolescent growing up in Long Island, Falk suffered the onset of a profound depression that eventually held him captive in the attic of his parents' home, afraid to leave and afraid to live. At the age of 24, Falk found some relief in Zoloft but felt he needed to be jolted into life by pursuing for real what was his only form of escape--reading the memoirs of war correspondents. Off he goes to Sarajevo with dubious credentials and no contacts, so conspicuous in his body armor that townspeople at first take him for a spy. With the help of a local family and a freewheeling freelance reporter, he eventually situates himself and reengages in life amid the harrowing fear of death. Falk alternates between recollections of his numbing depression and his incredible adventures in Sarajevo. Zoloft and a promise made to his mother pull Falk through. This is a thoroughly engaging memoir, sometimes hilarious and sometimes horrifying, as Falk recalls episodes in a brutal war and one man's personal struggle to reconnect with life. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1ST edition (December 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805072187
• ISBN-13: 978-0805072181
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,679,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars touching insightful autobiography, January 25, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace (Hardcover)

This touching autobiography wins on two fronts as John Falk paints quite a self portrait of his depressing teen years culminating with the miracle of Zoloft and his twenties as a journalist in Sarajevo in 1993, the heart of the hostilities. Both accounts rivet the audience as Mr. Falk explains that he was a happy preadolescent raised in a loving home when suddenly at twelve he became depressed and stayed that way for a dozen years until Zoloft gave him back his life. To celebrate his return from the living dead, John becomes a war correspondent. This segment of the book relates how the devastated city is home to people trying to stay alive. These human interest stories are touching and warm with hopes that those like a working student made it. Mr. Falk provides a heartfelt remarkable memoir of a person surviving two wars, a personal one that medicine cures and the other caused by human atrocities that should shame everyone.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two wars, Two victories., April 1, 2005

By 

G Smith "stupid middle age white guy" (the library) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace (Hardcover)

This novel jumps from present day Sarajevo in 1993 to, in the next chapter, Long Island in the 1980's. In Sarajevo Falk fights to stay alive and find stories as an inexperienced and naive freelance reporter, back on Long Island he fights a long and horrible depression that started for no reason and for twelve long hard years showed no signs of ever ending. John is convinced that no one can help him and all he can do is try to hang on and hope everything goes back to the way it was.

Through the book we see all aspects of his life and get to know Falk better than most of our closest relatives. It made me wonder how many of my close friends are secretly battling depression. John eventually does see a psychiatrist, and after a few different medications finally finds relief. After college he sets off to find himself and ends up in Sarajevo alone again. But with the help of Zoloft he knows that nothing is hopeless.

As a depression survivor, I would recommend this to anyone that thinks that they are alone without hope or anyone that has ever been comforted, as Falk was at one point, by knowing that they can end their life anytime. I know I've made the book sound depressing but Falk is a wonderful writer and the novel has many funny and uplifting moments. The world would be a better place if more people were like John Falk.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific adventure story and moving personal memoir, April 11, 2005

By 

Bennett - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace (Hardcover)

Whether navigating the harrowing world of snipers and anti-snipers in war-torn Sarajevo, or the perilous world of his own psyche, John Falk writes with wit, humor, and insight.

Falk had the guts to walk away from a cushy upper-middle-class life and into the most dangerous place on the planet. Afflicted by depression, he subjected himself to a kind of shock-treatment by journeying to Sarajevo in the hopes of becoming a freelance journalist. Once he settled in, with a monster stash of Zoloft in his bindle, Falk became close with the family who took him in as a boarder. While managing to stay alive and sane in a truly hellish battle zone, Falk sussed out a war story worthy of Heller or Vonnegut and became a successful writer. More importantly, however, he dedicated himself to helping people who badly needed it, and this personal story is the heart of the book.