Reviews

This is an excellent account of the life of a very successful and highly-principled politician who served in the Oregon legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives during the last third of the 20th century. It is among the best accounts of the actual workings of the legislative branches of state and federal government I’ve read in any autobiography--no doubt thanks in large part to the fact that before entering politics, the author was a successful journalist.

From a purely human-interest standpoint, the first chapter’s story of his early childhood (including his father’s abandonment of the family when the author was four years old) and the account in Chapter 30 about the author’s successful efforts to free a family of Ukrainian Jews from Russian persecution and ultimate immigration to the United States are among the most compelling in the book. While this book will be of particular interest to those of us who lived in Oregon during this period, I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in politics and recent history.