The childhood and youth memoir by world-famous social scientist Dean MacCannell, whose classic 1976 book The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class launched the field of modern tourism studies. In this personal turn, he exposes some of the seamier aspects of "The Greatest Generation" and the depth of the fissures in American society that are often miscast as recent. Here too are the radically different influences in his upbringing and early education that led him to his distinctive approach to modern social relations. Enthusiasts of classic European sports car racing and mountaineering will also find much to interest them in this gripping tale of an American boyhood that is unique but also archetypal.