Funny men don't necessarily have funny childhoods. Art Buchwald had to find his humor the hard way. In this poignant memoir, Buchwald writes with intimacy and candor about his early years - of a life constantly on the move, in the company of strangers. "Shortly after I was born, my mother was taken away from me or I was taken from my mother,' he begins, as he tells of a childhood which took him from a Seventh-Day Adventist shelter to new York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum to a series of foster homes - all before the age of fifteen. It was an experience which forever molded him. "By the time I was six or seven, I said to myself, "This is ridiculous. I think I'll become a humorist." Exactly how he negotiated the rocky path from the dining hall at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the best table at Maxim's in Paris is a memorable story told by a man who has made America laugh for forty years.