For Americans who grew up in the 1930s, the phrase ?before the war? calls up a distant time as remote from the way we live now as some foreign country. Looking back with a clear-eyed, unsentimental gaze, Samuel Hynes describes his midwestern boyhood during the lean times of the Great Depression: his father's wandering search for work; a long, hot summer on a farm; rough-and-tumble games in city alleys; the temptations of sex, stealing, and drinking; the wonder of falling in love for the first time. With eloquence and humor Hynes recaptures the dreams, adventures, sins, and triumphs of his American boyhood in the years of hardship and innocence before the war.

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