Don't ask author Gary Mielo what it was like to grow up in North Bergen, New Jersey. He's likely to relate personal essays and anecdotes that include 'the most heinous experience, the one which can easily produce the deepest and most lasting of scars, is an affliction known as the senior prom". He'll evoke 'a time when yellow air raid shelter signs, hanging on the walls of virtually all candy stores, ice cream parlors, and other public buildings,...