My Growing-Up Years

About the Book

In this frank and engaging memoir, Willard F. Mueller recalls his “growing-up years” during the Great Depression and World War II that took him from a farm in Minnesota to small-town Wisconsin and, eventually, to the Pacific front in World War II. These years marked the fault line between youth and manhood. A time when ordinary young men were asked to do the extraordinary. Full of compelling detail, humor and tributes to ancestors, family and friends, this memoir brings to life the vanished past of the Depression years as well as some of the most harrowing moments of the history of our nation.

About the Author

Willard Fritz Mueller was born in 1925 in Minnesota. After serving over two years on the Pacific front during World War II, he received BS and MS degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University. He subsequently taught at several universities and served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s, after which he was appointed William F. Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught courses in economics and law and directed large-scale research projects into the organization and competitive behavior of American business. Mueller is now emeritus professor and lives in Madison with his wife Shirley.