It's basically about life in the Streets of San Francisco. We are an international city.As in the rest of America, we are composed of people from all over the world. People pretty much get along here. You can take many examples such as the conflicts of The Protestants & Catholics of G.B. Or the conflicts of Bosnia. Or better yet, more recently: The Shiites & Sunnis in the Middle East. The magic of SF. is the fact that people are not only tolerant of others, but there's no sense of jealosy of others. If one group has ideas on how to live an easier life; instead being jealous of that group, we use the brilliant ideas & apply them for ourselves. In fact, if the rest of the planet thought like we do in SF. Then there would be a real basis for world peace.

This is a story of love, hate, lust, humor and longing in the time of war. When Jack Defurio, an educated 26 year old Mexican-American, newly married to Donna, is drafted and sent to Vietnam as an infantryman he must cope with the excruciating separation from her, the rigors of jungle warfare and his increasing revulsion for the Army.

Publisher description

The author was in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1957 to 1969. This is a true story of his experiences while employed as a diplomatic pouch clerk in the American Consulate General in Sydney, Australia; and in the U.S. Embassies in Manila, Beirut and Tokyo. The story entails his fight with Neo-McCarthyites in the State Department; the effects in Beirut of the 1967 Six Day War; a nuptial quandary with a Japanese Qantas airline stewardess; and assorted golfing, drinking and sexual divertissments. It is punctuated with original insights and with the malaise and anger which has befallen the psyches of Americans of good will following the death of FDR and the assassinations of his potential successors.

Eddie Mair is, by his own account, one of Britain's most beloved broadcasters. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he has worked in radio all his adult life. From the foothills of commercial radio in his hometown, through the sunlit uplands of the BBC in Scotland, he has reached the peaks of his profession, with BBC network radio in London. And he's never afraid to work a metaphor beyond endurance. In addition he's appeared on most of the BBC's TV channels, including ones that are no longer on TV. He witnessed the handover of Hong Kong and once asked Arnold Schwarzenegger a question - though he takes no responsibility for either. For nearly twenty years he has been at the helm of Radio 4's PM: a nightly news round up that means Eddie works for just one hour a day, giving him plenty time to knock together these diaries. Whether he's interviewing politicians, getting people to share their personal experiences, or just imparting his favourite zesty chicken recipes, Eddie is never happier than when he is at the microphone. Except when he is at the microphone with a large martini. In truth, his neediness is an irritation to everyone who knows him and if you buy this book he might get out of their hair. Eddie's other work, as a humanitarian and tireless, secret worker for charity is not mentioned in these pages.

Known as the "voice and conscience" of San Francisco, Herb Caen once wrote of his "Baghdad by the Bay": "The crowded garages and the empty old buildings above them, the half-filled nightclubs and the overfilled apartment houses, the saloons and the skies and the families huddled in the basements, the Third Street panhandlers begging for handouts in front of pawn shops filled with treasured trinkets, the great bridges and the rattle-trap street cars, the traffic that keeps moving although it has no place to go, thousands of newcomers glorying in the sights and sounds of a city they suddenly decided to love instead of leave." Only in San Francisco.