The twenty years, 1929-1949, that spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and Post-War, years of sacrifice, calamity, and renewal, was a period of continuous convulsions characterized by despair, grief, and hope. To recapture the essence of this tumultuous period, recollections of a small group of former high school classmates, friends, and siblings--residents of Staten Island, New York City's once semi-rural, sparsely populated community--have been assembled into a collective narrative. The nature of this long ago, never to be repeated environment, differed sharply from what we see...