Donald Windham's literary contributions have been many and varied. He has been playwright, editor, novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist. Born to Fred and Louise Donaldson Windham in Atlanta, Windham's early life revolved around his mother, his brother, and his maternal grandparents' rambling Victorian house on Peachtree Street, where they lived after his parents' divorce when Windham was six. His childhood, through his graduation from Boys' High School at seventeen and his decision to leave for New York at nineteen, is chronicled in Windham's autobiography, Emblems of Conduct (1964), whose chapters, titled with the names of everyday objects, "The Chifforobe," "The Bath Tub," "The Blond Bed," "A Coin with a Hole in It," record the struggles of the family in the Depression years. Emblems of Conduct is not simply reminiscence, however. As Ralph McGill wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "It is a moving and rewarding piece of...