This youthful energy dances through The History, beginning with Growing Up the Hard Way in the 1930s, published in 1989
via Gauer's own enterprise, Precision Process Books. War and Peace in the the 1940s and The Fifties and Beyond in
Milwaukee followed, and are finding a small but growing audience, despite a limited distribution scheme.
The 80-year-old Gauer attests to the sort of nostalgia that is no defensive move against changing times, but more a
celebration of the present through the past.
"I feel there's a great value in nostalgia," he tells me, his voice blending with ceramic clatter and Sunday afternoon
dialogue around us at an East Side coffee shop.
"You can retreat into it without destroying your personality. You feel that a part of your life has been fulfilling.
