"Gardner Botsford grew up in a Manhattan town house under the benign eye of five live-in servants, a charming and cultivated stepfather, and a mother whose beauty and wit attracted admirers ranging from Harpo Marx and Alexander Woollcott to Bernard Baruch and Averell Harriman.

Botsford went on to the inevitable proper schools (Hotchkiss, Yale), summered in France and on Long Island, married a popular and attractive girl, got an enviable job as a reporter on The New Yorker - and then, in 1942, everything came apart.".

"He was drafted into the infantry, trained as an infantry officer, and on D day landed with the First Infantry Division on Omaha Beach in Normandy. His chronicle takes us from the beach to the liberation of Paris, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the Czech city of Karlovy Vary, which, in a comic, desperate ceremony, was surrendered in its entirety to him and a fellow officer by its German garrison.".

"The memoir's concluding chapters bring us back to The New Yorker and give us memorable portraits of such New Yorker ornaments as Harold Ross, A.J. Liebling, Mollie Panter-Downes, Maeve Brennan, Janet Flanner, and, of course, William Shawn, Botsford's longtime friend, mentor, boss, and, at the last, adversary."--BOOK JACKET.