Wow I think this is the first time I’ve seen Tobias Wolff mentioned here. Been a while since I read This Boys Life. Good book but for me I would pick In Pharoah’s Army. The characters seemed more vivid but maybe less relatable than growing up with a single mother in a hardscrabble rural backwater.

I really enjoyed The Zanzibar Chest, maybe you have read it. It’s a memoir of the Kenyan war correspondent of English decent who worked in Africa. The book covers his time in Rwanda, Somalia, and maybe a few other places.

One of my favorite non fiction books is “Man and the Mediterranean Forest” by J.V. Thirgood. The author was a forest scientist for England when it still controlled the Egypt, Arabia, and the Levant. It covers the time from the period where North Africa was described by ancient Greek writers as “a land of perpetual shade” through the destruction of the rain forests of Lebanon in 18th and 19th centuries.

It’s been 20 years since I read it and still angry about it. I got it through my library when it was well out of print and somewhat valuable. I filed to have them move it to closed stacks or rare books, but they ignored me and their only copy disappeared a few years later.