Publisher's Synopsis
Born in Forty-Two is a non-fiction retrospective spanning the lifetime of author, Michael P. Kost. The book drops the reader in the heart of America during World War II. The country is perhaps more politically united and embracing of the patriotic spirit than it has been in quite some time, and yet Japanese American citizens are being forced to live in relocation camps, entrapped by barbed-wire fences and armed soldiers on twenty-four-hour patrol. Jump forward to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1960. The media, especially television, has become an increasingly important and reliable source for the news, with frequent updates and reputable broadcasters. Kost, now eighteen, experiences the world, not simply as a child watching on in wonder, but as a young adult able to vote and engage in this newly volatile political climate. This politically charged memoir discusses all the landmark historical events of the last seventy years-from America's receptiveness to electing the first Irish-Catholic president in 1960 and then the first black president in 2008, to the releasing of the Pentagon Papers in the 1970's. Kost's hope is that the reader will look back through time with him and remember that though, "you cannot change the past, you can inject part of the past into the present"-a vital lens with which to look toward the future.
