A memoir of Personal Development, Social Action, Education Reform, and Adirondack Preservation
by Howard Kirschenbaum
Part autobiography and part social history. COMING OF AGE IN THE BABY BOOM tells the story of a white, middle-class, privileged youth embodying the contradictions of growing up in post-War America. --As a boy he won two citizenship medals from the American Legion; as a youth he was chased by Legionnaires down the main street of his home town for organizing against the War in Vietnam. --Growing up he had little or no contact with minorities, but he became deeply involved in the civil rights movement, including participation in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer.--He was an Eagle Scout and Assistant Scoutmaster who experimented with a variety of illicit drugs.--He moved to the Adirondack Mountains to live like Thoreau, in a cabin in the woods without phone or electricity, and ended up owning and managing several grand, rustic estates of Alfred Vanderbilt, J. Pierpont Morgan, and others icons of the Gilded Age. --He was raised in Judaism, became an agnostic, had a mystical experience, and forged his own spiritual integration.--He loved his strong, moralistic father; then hated him; then in archetypal fashion both learned to love and accept one another.--His early relationships with girls and women were desperate, selfish, and patriarchal; then gradually he became a thoughtful and egalitarian partner and lover. --His self-concept was that of an anti-Establishment outsider, yet he initiated and co-led a successful effort to amend New York State’s constitution. Along the way toward reconciling such contradictions, he wrote some twenty-five books; became a leader in education, counseling and historic preservation; debated Moral Majority leader Rev. Jerry Falwell before an audience of 2000 people; was interviewed by Phil Donahue on the Today Show; ran the New York City Marathon; hiked the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks, and raised a family. Told with disarming honesty, psychological insight and humor, Kirschenbaum’s personal story is in many ways the story of America in the mid to late twentieth century. He experienced the universal dramas and dilemmas of finding himself, developing mature relationships, and attaining meaning in a tumultuous period of cultural change. The narrative’s themes, whether personal, social or political, resonate strongly today.
312 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 9798633028195
