Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for biography/autobiography, this is Russell Baker’s story of growing up in America between the world wars—in the backwood mountains of Virginia, in a New Jersey commuter town, and finally in the Depression-shadowed urban landscape of Baltimore. It is a story of adversity and courage, of the poignancy of love and the awkwardness of sex, of family bonds and family tensions. We meet the people who influenced Baker’s early life: his strong and loving mother, his bold little sister Doris, the awesome matriarch Ida Rebecca and her twelve sons. Here, too, are schoolyard bullies, great teachers, and the everyday heroes and heroines of the Depression who faced disaster with good cheer and usually muddled through.