The year: 1937. The setting: New York City's turbulent Upper West Side. It is the author's sixteenth year, remembered vividly, from his last months in high school to his first overwhelmingly monotonous full-time job, to his seventeenth birthday. One dazzling, sometimes frightening year. His friends, his loves, his coming of age are recreated here hilariously, intimately, shockingly. There were exciting adventures to be had in New York every day, among them the stunning revelation that more girls than the author believed possible were willing (sometimes eager) to take him to bed. Or vice versa. Life was rich and full and funny in 1937, and the author lived it with ravenous appetite.