In this deeply affecting memoir, Morris Dickstein introduces us to his LowerEast Side childhood and his boisterous and close-knit Jewish family. Drawn tothe literature, the films, and the heady cosmopolitan culture of the 1950s andBeat-generation New York City, Dickstein, a precocious student, finds himself abandoningthe confined religious world of his grandparents and parents for the creativeenticements of modern American culture. This inevitable tension runs throughout thememoir—reflected in his fierce rebellion as a yeshiva student, his embrace of a world ofideas and rich literary traditions at Columbia, his sexual awakening and first love affair,his emotional turmoil at genteel Yale and Cambridge, and the liberation promised bythe chaotic upheavals of the 1960s—all drawn in eloquent and gripping detail. In thetradition of classic memoirs by Alfred Kazin and Irving Howe, this frank and beautifullyrendered story sheds light on the many different forms education can take.