Carl Zuckmayer describes in the most gripping and poetic form the story of his life from a writer's progress to fame in Germany prior to WWII, includes his survival through all of WWI on the Western Front, resurgence of his fame in Germany put on the list of enemies of the Nazi State, flight to the United States via Switzerland, failure to succeed or endure the life of a Holywood film score writer, establishment of himself and wife as a Vermont Farmer and subsisting as such as a modern American pioneer until after the end of WWII, then return to help rebuild Europe and at last settlement in Switzerland after writing numerouns world famouis plays and books. A one of a kind book where the reader encounters dozens of world figures like Bert Brecht, Marlene Dietrich and many others. The poetry of his language is very moving. This reviewer has read it only in my mother tongue, German in which it was written and cannot guarantee the quality of the translation. I am myself a translator. Yet it must give a deep and penetrating image of the events he describes. His description of life in Vermlont, encounter with a typical Vermonter who leased his large farm him for almost no money after 10 minutes acquaintaince, how he built up the farm, descriptions of the New England fall that are at the level of Robert Frost.