Author Steven J. Harper pays tribute to a well-respected teacher with
this biography of a distinguished William Smith Mason Professor of
History at Northwestern University, Richard W. Leopold. Harper had
maintained contact with his former professor, as had hundreds of other
alumni, meeting with him in the apartment to which his age and health
confined him. When Leopold invited him to review his biographical
materials to prepare a New York Times obituary, Harper began to catch
glimpses of a deeper history in Leopold's life: that of Jews in America
after the turn of the century.
Across two years of Sundays, Leopold's life came together and Harper
began to notice parallels between the life of his professor and the life
of his recently deceased father-in-law. Both grew up in less orthodox
households but were still identified as Jewish by others; both attended
Ivy League colleges, fighting (and beating) anti-Semitism there; and
both served their country with distinction in World War II. The two men
persevered through a twentieth century Jewish-American experience that
they and many others shared, but rarely discussed. Steven Harper has
caught them both on the page just in time to document their lives, their
culture, and the nation that grew and changed alongside them.
