This autobiography by the son of Thomas Mann has a double value:- first as a distinguished autobiography, a sensitive portrait of a young man growing up in between-wars Germany, second as a loving intimate portrait of his father. A vivid picture of what the first war meant to a child, with its violent patriotism, its deprivations; then the moral disorder of Berlin youth in the '20's and his attempts to express himself against the rising tide of fascism, one of the reasons for the family exile. Finally, the measures taken in and here to carry on the fight -- now epitomized in this autobiography as he waits to get into the Army, in the U.S.A. Not always easy reading, but important as an emotional and philosophical as well as factual record.