Just in time for a patriotic July 4th read, Mt. Lebanon's Todd DePastino, an adjunct professor of history at Waynesburg University, has authored a book about the life of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin, the World War II cartoonist and creator of "dogface" combat infantry soldiers, Willie and Joe.

For a while, it was touch and go if "Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front," would even get into print. Dr. DePastino spent a year researching his subject, starting in 2003 with a field trip to the Library of Congress.

It took him an additional two years to finish writing the 370-page biography.

However, when the moment came to get the book into print, his agent had a difficult time convincing publishers to accept it.

"I have 12 rejection letters that say, while the book is well-written, they don't think there'd be a readership audience interested in it," said Dr. DePastino, who earned his doctorate in history from Yale.

"Bill Mauldin has been kind of forgotten. Unless you're over 60, you probably won't even recognize his name," Dr. DePastino said.

Eventually, the author struck pay dirt when his 71-year old agent, Jacques de Spoelbech, sent the manuscript to Ed Barber, a 73-year-old editor at W.W. Norton & Co., who was enthusiastic about the book and got the publishing house to commit to it.

Since its Feb. 25 release, the biography has sold all 15,000 first edition copies, is both a history and military book club selection and has been reviewed by The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Now in its second printing, the work ranks No. 7 on the Dallas Morning News' Best Seller List.

The Mauldin biography is Dr. DePastino's second book. The first, "Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America," a look at the hobo subculture starting just after the Civil War, was released in 2003.

"You wouldn't think the two books had much to do with one another, but, in fact, one led into the other," Dr. DePastino said. "Just as I was finishing the first book, I remarked to someone that the hobo subculture seemed to disappear with the onset of World War II.

It was then I was told that it didn't disappear, it was assimilated into the army -- just like Mr. Mauldin's Willie and Joe.

Not clear about who Mr. Mauldin was at the time, Dr. DePastino got a of a copy of "Up Front," a compilation of Mr. Mauldin's World War II cartoons, and was "stunned by their exquisitely rendered depiction" of life on the front.

"You can almost smell the gun powder and feel the mud sucking at the soldier's boots when you look at them," he said.

Calling the cartoons initially published in the Army's Stars and Stripes sardonic and dark, he said they seem anti-Army, with several that have an antiwar tone.

"Mauldin's cartoons are unlike any Americans had seen before," he said. "Usually, soldiers were shown as pious, clean-cut and determined. Mr. Mauldin depicted them as disheveled, mud-soaked and downbeat. It makes you wonder how they ever got past the Army censors."

During the war, when the cartoons were first syndicated on the home front, many civilians became upset and wrote letters complaining to the newspapers. In time, however, they were accepted by the public.

In May 1945, at the age of 23, Mr. Mauldin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his work and remains the youngest individual ever to receive this honor.

"With time, Mr. Mauldin went from being just a cartoonist to a transformational artist -- someone who changed the way society sees things, including war," Dr. DePastino said.

One telling anecdote in the book that took place on May 30, 1945, in Nettuno, Italy, near Anzio, deals with a first Memorial Day celebration after the German surrender.

During the ceremony that dedicated a cemetery holding the remains of the fallen American soldiers, the main speaker, Gen. Lucian Truscott, commander of the American Fifth Army in Italy, turned his back on the audience and its numerous VIPs, faced the sea of headstones and apologized to the dead for the mistakes he made during the battle.

"Truscott pledged he would spend the rest of his life explaining that there is no glory in war," Dr. DePastino said. "Mauldin was present at the dedication, and it was something he remembered the rest of his life."

The Post-Gazette published a review Feb. 17 of "Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front" written by retired Wisconsin journalist and editor, Roger K. Miller.