[2] With the birth of his first daughter in 1996, DePastino became a stay-at-home dad, teaching in the evenings at Penn State Beaver and Waynesburg College while finishing his Ph.D.
He then revised his dissertation on the history of homelessness into a book, for which he won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
After editing, annotating, and introducing the lost classic, The Road by Jack London, DePastino plunged into his Bill Mauldin research.
Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (2008) received strong reviews, was an Eisner Award finalist, and won the Sperber Prize for the best biography of a major media figure.
Commissioned in Battle: A Combat Infantryman in the Pacific, co-authored by Jay Gruenfled, was released by Hellgate Press in early 2012.