For Christopher Buckley, the West is more than just a direction: it stands for dreams and possibilities that are supple, color-filled, and bittersweet. Tinged with memories both comic and dark, this is a book about what it meant to grow up in California during the late ‘50s and early '60s, one written from the viewpoint of a spirited and insightful observer capable of deftly weaving tales about Catholic school, fashion, cars, music, and dances in the high school gym together with smooth-flowing personal reflections on poetry, politics, and life’s many ironies. With uncanny accuracy, Buckley’s essays show us how childhood follows us into adulthood, how the culture of our birth sustains, directs, and sometimes blinds us. Haunting in its observations, Sleepwalk is also vastly entertaining and, for anyone not familiar with the ethos of the period, terrifically informative.