With humane wisdom and biting wit, Lee Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence running a graphic design company and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York City. Whether he is writing about taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day, whether saving a stranger from a pair of robbers or stealing from a friend, Stringer powerfully conveys the paradoxes and emotional complexity of "normal" life on the street. Gestures of human kindness, even heroism, stand alongside acts of wanton violence and desperation, creating in the end one of the most remarkable urban memoirs of our time.