RATTLESNAKE DREAMS is my memoir. It begins in the Vietnamese village of Tho An, in April 1966, which my company of Marines is burning. I was guarding a group of women and children, and one old man. One child, a baby boy, is screaming louder than the explosions of grenades and machine guns going off all around me. That long moment - that very long moment - changed my life forever. That baby boy, and his mother, and the other women of his family, have been my teachers since that day. Since that moment, my life has consisted in studying what happened to me that day, and what has continued to happen to me in the 40+ years since: journalism travels in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, the Soviet Union, Prague, Eastern Europe... This book is the result of those travels, and studies in Leningrad, Colorado College (Cum Laude 1969), and graduate studies in the History of Consciousness at University of California, Santa Cruz. It was 19 years in the writing.