SOURCE: "A Wide-Eyed Witness to War," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 2, 1993, pp. 3, 10.

Hoxie is an educator who specializes in history. In the review of A Moment of War below, he considers Lee's book to be essential for "anyone who wants to understand what war is actually like, when it is not being dramatized, hyped, heroized or propagandized."

Laurie Lee's memoirs are little known in the United States, though in English schools his first two volumes occupy about the same place that J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye has filled here. A Moment of War, the third volume of Lee's story, had a substantial run on the British bestseller list last year—five decades after the first volume appeared.

Lee's prose has much the same kind of spare elegance and direct, heart-wrenching clarity of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; and both Lincoln and Lee are dealing with that...