"It's a Miracle It Wasn't Worse" is to some extent a work of social history, though my principal aim is to give readers a close-up view of my formative years, as if through a window, one that is also a mirror, for what I have written is most acutely a reflection of myself, a view that at the time was to a considerable degree obscured by fog-clouds of varying consistencies that circulated in my brain and persisted for decades after I reached adulthood until, only yesterday, it seems, a mostly unobstructed view emerged."