This is a story of war and of combat; but not of front-line action. This rather deals with men in the backwash of war, in that area between the front lines and safe places far in the rear; and it puts this in the context of larger actions. It is told solely from the point of view of an enlisted man; specifically, it is the view of a man who went in a private and came out a private, who served in five campaigns in Europe, and along the way, together with his friends, participated in the Liberation of Paris, where they remained for over two months. This concentrates on the daily lives and actions of men in that peculiar state of being; men prepared for combat and expecting combat (ultimately), and meanwhile living comparatively free from constraint in a foreign culture, for a time. Some of the men at last reached front lines, in the last battles in Europe. This is a story also of black-marketeering, major and minor, with severe sentences meted out for trivial causes, and of one man (fellow soldier with the author) sentenced to die for desertion; a story also of love, sex, honor, betrayals, and courage. While knowing the necessity of this war, the author comes out at last with a jaundiced view of huge armies and of governments that feed on them.

This title offers an in-depth examination of colonialism as presented in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, as well as contemporary perspectives on this issue. Discussions include the use of language to convey status and power, the clash of Igbo and European cultures, the loss of personal identity, and the different faces of neo-colonialism.

"Nashville Lullaby" is an exploration of the devastating poverty of the 1920s South from the observant eyes of a six-year-old boy forced to be wise beyond his years. The boy, burdened and sharpened by a neurological disorder - uncontrollable tics, spasms, and night terrors - tries to process the desperate poverty of his close knit but fatherless family in 1926. In Louisiana, his uncle faces off a group terrorizing a black man, and the boy stumbles on Klan activity. In Nashville, where they move, he is taunted and brutally beaten by juvenile bullies because of his condition. And his mother struggles to find food and coal to keep the family alive.

This is a story of war and of combat; but not of front-line action. This rather deals with men in the backwash of war, in that area between the front lines and safe places far in the rear; and it puts this in the context of larger actions. It is told solely from the point of view of an enlisted man; specifically, it is the view of a man who went in a private and came out a private, who served in five campaigns in Europe, and along the way, together with his friends, participated in the Liberation of Paris, where they remained for over two months. This concentrates on the daily lives and actions of men in that peculiar state of being; men prepared for combat and expecting combat (ultimately), and meanwhile living comparatively free from constraint in a foreign culture, for a time. Some of the men at last reached front lines, in the last battles in Europe. This is a story also of black-marketeering, major and minor, with severe sentences meted out for trivial causes, and of one man (fellow soldier with the author) sentenced to die for desertion; a story also of love, sex, honor, betrayals, and courage. While knowing the necessity of this war, the author comes out at last with a jaundiced view of huge armies and of governments that feed on them.