Impassioned participant in, and acute observer of, the life of his times, Alvin Josephy takes us from the New York of the teens and twenties up to the nineties on the Oregon ranch where he has found his heart's home. His "walk" leads him to Harvard during the so-hopeful days of the New Deal; to scriptwriting for MGM in Hollywood and menial work on Wall Street during the Depression; through a job with the Herald Tribune (for which he interviewed Trotsky); to the landings on Iwo Jima and Guam, which he covered as a Marine Corps combat correspondent; to a civil rights march with Martin Luther King, Jr.; to his long years of profound involvement in Native American and environmental causes.

With his extraordinary grasp of the significance of the events he witnessed, and the spirited, evocative voice of his narrative, Josephy captures all the excitement, the turmoil, the problems, progress, setbacks, and satisfactions of this American century.