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Doggedness and honesty are not a bad combination. The middleaged, civilian part of Wilson's memoirs has its own interest. The writer survived his success, and even had a little fun with it. He watched his marriage to a beautiful and decent woman wind down to nothing, without understanding why it was happening. He then survived divorce and the period that has become the eighth age of modern man, in which the newly single 40-year-old gawks around like a teenager, wondering miserably how to get girls. He married again, with great love and luck, lived on a boat for five years, beat down alcoholism, watched his children grow, and went on honorably writing books that are not, now, much read. His years have been a skidway, but he has man aged to observe the slide well. John Skow