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From Booklist
As if the name Arnold Hitler wasn't baggage enough, the protagonist of this sweet, playful story carries a bit of Forrest Gump in him, too. Though the timbre of Arnold's intellect is richer than Forrest's, they're equally earnest. And as Arnold strikes out from small-town Texas to Harvard and New York City in the 1960s and early '70s, he keeps encountering historic figures. On a school trip to Dallas, young Arnold stands between the second gunman and the motorcade as JFK meets his destiny. Later, this soul-searching Hitler asks Noam Chomsky why Harvard students have such problems with his name when it caused nary a Lone Star stir. And soon after a protofascist descendant of Cotton Mather begins bedeviling Arnold, this fine specimen of a scholar-athlete is taken under Leonard ("call me Lenny") Bernstein's brilliant wing. All the while, Arnold's grandfather Jacobo mentors him from Italy by placing long-distance calls to his knee. Emulating an energetic dorm bull session among overeducated undergrads, this clever narrative package also makes plenty of room for literate explorations of Jewishness, anti-Semitism, and serious games of "What's in a name?" Frank Sennett

Review

Praise for Marc Estrin and Insect Dreams "A colossal book of characters and events that inspires tears of laughter and sadness in its rich blend of clever metaphor and unsettling facts, this promises to become a pivotal literary landmark." --Library Journal "As brilliant as Pynchon and as funny as the best of Robbins and Vonnegut, this is a generous gift to the idea-starved fiction reader. Heart, head, hilarity, and history all rolled passionately into one. Don't miss this!" --Book Sense

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