Summary :
If you assume a world in which merit is recognized and rewarded, then there is nothing in the least bit improbable about the incredible array of roles, involvements, special assignments, and remarkable successes and achievements of Mike Sovern, which he recounts with such verve in this remarkable personal memoir. Mike’s truly extraordinary talents and capacities were abundantly evident from his early years to virtually everyone (he became the youngest tenured member of the Columbia faculty at age twenty-eight), so it was indeed probable that over the course of his life he would be drawn into just about every part of the human drama of his era. Th at he views his life as “improbable,” however, is an interesting fact, not least in how it brings an essence of pure delight to his telling of the stories in this book. It’s as if everything here has an element of surprise in it, which means everything is all the more vivid to us, the readers. Every life off ers us insights into a particular moment in time as well as into the overall age. Th e breadth of Mike Sovern’s experiences takes us many places over the last three quarters of a century—to race relations in America, to the development of freedom of speech at the dawn

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