Winner of the 2001 Ohioana Book for nonfiction.
This memoir is an important reminder that urban life is not the only life: it reveals, for instance, that for people living close to their needs and far from the command-posts of the cash economy, a thing like the Great Depression could be largely irrelevant. Frank Mathias respectfully renders small-town history as a worthy piece of something larger: ourselves. America.
~Barbara Kingsolver
A trip down memory lane. Filled with amusing and often poignant stories, it presents a picture of a kinder, less sophisticated, more moral society.
~Bowling Green Daily News
Nowhere is what we've lost more poignantly apparent.... An insightful travelogue in time as well as place.
~Cleveland Plain Dealer
Vividly recaptures the sights, sounds, smells, and very texture of small-town and rural life in the interwar years.
~Journal of Southern History
A well-received collection of memoirs about what is being called the Greatest Generation.
~Kettering-Oakwood (OH) Times
Vivid and accurate, poignant and funny, this is a marvelous picture of pre-war life whose readability is enhanced by its insights into what makes the American character.
~Library Journal
An insightful look at what the 'Greatest Generation' was like before they fought and won the war.
~Maysville Ledger-Independent
A memoir about the wondrous variety of daily life, even during the Depression years, that shaped the men and women of the era.
~McCormick (SC) Messenger
An affectionate and nostalgic memoir.
~Ohio History
A sensitive and respectful balance between the stories of his childhood and the realities of war.
~Ohioana Quarterly
A sobering, well-considered and engrossing portrait of ordinary life in a tumultuous era.
~Publishers Weekly
A gentle and worthwhile read for those interested in Kentucky's rural past.
~Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Mathias weaves a three-dimensional tapestry of just how these young Americans became so well-bonded that they could make a powerful contribution toward the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
~Sewanee Review
Takes us back to a time and place that live on in the memories of all of us who grew up in small towns and rural America.... I recommend it highly.
~Stephen E. Ambrose
He recreates such a complete and convincing world.
~War, Literature, and the Arts
Poignant moments break the narrator's nostalgic rhythm as we learn that particular playmates will later die fighting on foreign shores.
~Washington Post Book World
