From the author of two of our most legendary novels, <b>Catch-22</b> and <b>Something<br>Happened</b>, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a loving<br>evocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turns<br>into literature.<br><br>Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on the<br>boardwalks of Depression-era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble of<br>the Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin's knishes. It offers a<br>dizzying bombardier's-eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where Heller<br>encountered the characters and incidents he would later translate into Catch-22.<br>It depicts a writer coming to terms with both rejection and celebrity. Here, in<br>short, is a life filled with incident and insight, recollected with  subversive<br>humor, exquisite timing, and a fine appreciation for the absurd.