Here are the humane and hard-hitting dispatches that John Steinbeck filed for the New York Herald Tribune at the height of World War II. While in England, Steinbeck tells stories of a bomber crew's courage, of the London blitz, of a goat that is an RAF mascot, and of the song "Lili Marlene." Later he is sent to North Africa and then joins a special-operations unit assignmed diversionary action along the coast of Italy. He eats and drinks with the soldiers behind the lines, talks with them, and fights beside them. Steinbeck's empathy for the common man and his eye for detail here evoke the human side of war and the emotional impact on those who participated in it.

England -- Africa -- Italy.