Lewis H. Carlson was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, the only child of a Jewish father and a Scandinavian mother. It was the depth of the Great Depression, there was no work, and so-called "mixed" marriages meant additional pressures on a young couple unable to survive the hard times.

After the marriage ended in divorce, the young boy lived with his grandparents while his mother returned to college to get her teaching degree. Following an insecure childhood, he became an indifferent student, a frustrated pursuer of the fairer sex, and a military misfit before eventually achieving reasonable competence as a fly-fisherman, a lover of animals, and a gently radical professor of history. He also found a lovely Swedish girl to be his lifetime companion.

He offers this sage advice in the introduction to his memoir: "Listen to your inner voices, which are very different than what passes for truth in our mass-mediated, myth-laden, materialistic society. Be nostalgic about the future because it belongs to you, and not to those who demand that you live in a mythical past they themselves created."

This is his story, told with the humor he employs to stumble across the hurdles of life.

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal story, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom. The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a POW, and Lewis Carlson's authoritative background to the man, his unit, and the fight Alexander Jefferson fought so well. This revised edition covers the story of Jefferson's continuing outreach and education work, as he brings the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to communities and schools across the country, and the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Airmen in 2007. Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is perhaps the only account of the African American experience in a German prison camp.

Lewis H. Carlson was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, the only child of a Jewish father and a Scandinavian mother. It was the depth of the Great Depression, there was no work, and so-called "mixed" marriages meant additional pressures on a young couple unable to survive the hard times.

After the marriage ended in divorce, the young boy lived with his grandparents while his mother returned to college to get her teaching degree. Following an insecure childhood, he became an indifferent student, a frustrated pursuer of the fairer sex, and a military misfit before eventually achieving reasonable competence as a fly-fisherman, a lover of animals, and a gently radical professor of history. He also found a lovely Swedish girl to be his lifetime companion.

He offers this sage advice in the introduction to his memoir: "Listen to your inner voices, which are very different than what passes for truth in our mass-mediated, myth-laden, materialistic society. Be nostalgic about the future because it belongs to you, and not to those who demand that you live in a mythical past they themselves created."

This is his story, told with the humor he employs to stumble across the hurdles of life.