My Story tells the tale of one man's coming to adulthood in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Because of his international focus, the Author had said little about a subject that might interest a reader familiar with his existing body of work, that is, himself. So, he has turned a penetrating gaze from his customary subjects--people and places in the Middle East and South Asia--to a subject that provides context for his earlier books. From family histories of eighteenth-century Cevio in the Swiss Alps and Marseille in Provence; from childhood, youth, adolescence, and early adulthood in the United States; to the Navy and the