Welcome back to those wonderful years of growing up with your friends and schoolmates in your home town.

The new book Wonderful Passaic describes those magic years in the eyes of one child born during the Great Depression (1930's) and who also experienced the "Home Front" efforts of World War II. Coupled with these great national events was the fact that this child lived in a multi-ethnic "melting pot" city of Passaic, New Jersey.

These true growing up adventures are told in a series of stories, some with side splitting humor, others highly poignant.

For example:

• How learning the "facts of life" from the older guys on the street corner caused a major lifetime disaster
• How, with his best friend, he personally helped defeat Japan and Germany in WWII
• How he witnessed the three greatest aeronautical events of the 20th century
• How the handwriting rules in the Passaic schools caused a blunder in front of President John F. Kennedy which helped Kennedy decide to send a man to the moon
• How the structural design of the giant Saturn rocket was actually invented in a Passaic toilet bowl

But more important, these stories provide the secrets of how the immigrant dominated Passaic uniquely prepared its children to succeed in America, and how it is still doing it today.