Book excerpt: During the 1920s, the United States, suddenly aware of its potential following success in World War I, offered bright promise to its youth and especially to its rural youth. Harold Breimyer, the author of this memoir, was one of those rural youth- an Ohio farm boy. In this evocative memoir, told in the third person, Breimyer recounts how he and his fellows were encouraged to form high expectations for themselves, and how they fulfilled them.