With vivid detail Your Loving Son, Philip takes us back to the lives of the GIs in Germany at the end of World War II. Philip Herzig, a 19-year-old studying at Princeton University, was drafted in 1944. For the next two years he wrote home every other day, describing his life, first in boot camp, then in Germany, first in battle duty and then in the army of occupation. Philip describes everything from the guns issued during boot camp to the desolate surroundings of bombed out Germany. He even spends a day at the Nuremburg Trials. His mature observations about the German personality, about the GIs fraternizing with German frauleins-the enemy-and politics in the US are all fascinating and honest. At the same time, this boy misses his family greatly and doesn't hesitate to fantasize about their trips in the family car, the cookouts and his parents' loving personalities. After showing his sister Pat's photo around to his friends in his company, he warns her that she may be getting a lot of phone calls when the war is over. The book includes photos of Phil and his buddies as they travel around Germany and their posturing in the mountaintop ruins of Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden. He describes his surroundings -from the Riviera when he's on deserved leave after action that led to a Purple Heart to the house of a family that hosted him in Holland to the shower the company gets to take in a deserted monastery. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph J. Ellis says in his Preface: "Your Loving Son, Philip is a major memoir from the World War II generation, distinctive for its literacy, its palpable recovery of the ordinary routines amidst those extraordinary times, the distinctive voice of a coming-of-age American man-child who has been hurled into the greatest military venture of the twentieth century...Philip is always disarmingly honest, never poses, never embellishes for effect. This is the genuine article."

This is an inspiring, beautiful story, about a fascinating woman, Mara Galaty, told by Mara herself, her family and her friends around the world, as events in her life unfolded. Filled with pictures, comments and the exchanges that helped them all deal with her illness, it has inspired even those who did not know her. It is told with affection and humor, based on love, friendship and optimism. It is also a guide for all of us in keeping active, being happy, continuing to travel and learn, working for lofty goals and enjoying life even while dealing with cancer or helping family or friends who are living with cancer. The Blog first introduces us to Mara in August 2007, when she reports "straight from the horse's mouth" that she has been evacuated from her USAID post in Amman, Jordan to the Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York for treatment after MRI tests showed she had metastatic melanoma cancer lesions (tumors) on multiple sites in her brain. The Blog entries and the stories told by her family and friends at her memorial services around the world attest to a life lived fully, with generosity, compassion and joy. From the accounts of her birth in Germany, through her escapades at school, her adventures in the Peace Corps, her battle with virulent breast cancer at the age of 32, and the international challenges she met working in Mercy Corps and USAID, you will find yourself laughing and crying, unable to put the book down. Mara lived life to the fullest. She was only 37 when she died, but she accomplished as much as most do in 90 years. Mara's upbeat attitude and that of her world-wide web of family and friends enabled her to pursue the lifestyle she wanted, allowing her to enjoy her life to the last day. Many of the contributors to the blog as well as the medical and health professionals who have read it recommend this book to people facing tough cancer and life-style decisions. Mara's example and her positive outlook are certain to help cancer patients aspire to a quality of life they might not have thought possible.