Readers expecting a gossipy "How I became a newspaper man" autobiography won't find it in reporter-novelist Hamill's first nonfiction book. The title notwithstanding, this is also no powerful Days of Wine and Roses memoir. Hamill devotes many pages to an almost year-by-year account of his Depression and World War II Brooklyn childhood. The son of Irish immigrants, Hamill soon learns about the "culture of drinking" from his alcoholic father. Hamill at first seeks escape through pulp fiction and comic books (he longs to be a cartoonist), but as a teenager he gets drunk with his street pals and becomes sexually confident under booze's liberating influence. The rest of Hamill's book is a sketchy overview of his Navy years, his turbulent first marriage, his early career at the New York Post , and of course his "drinking life." While a skillful writer, Hamill strangely fails to convey the true horror of alcoholism. Recommended for libraries where his novels are popular.