46 Michael Meltsner, currently a professor at Northeastern University School of Law, has had a long and storied career as an attorney, law professor, and author. With Passion: An Activist Lawyer's Life is his second memoir, following The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer, published in 2006. He has also written fiction, drama, legal texts, and numerous articles. His first memoir focused on his years as first assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Meltsner worked for the LDF from 1961 to 1970, during the height of the civil rights movement. With Passion forms a kind of companion text to his previous memoir, starting with some of his earliest childhood memories, stories about growing up in New York, his undergraduate years and law school, and some of the more memorable celebrity encounters of his legal career. Though it does cover some of the same territory as The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer, With Passion broadens and deepens Meltsner's depictions of his life.47 Meltsner begins by reflecting on his relationship with his parents and New York City, flipping back and forth between his early years living in Rockaway Beach and his memories of his parents' deaths. A mid-childhood move to the Upper West Side opened his eyes to a completely different part of the city, as did an early job delivering messages across town. He witnessed some of the early 1950s gang culture in various neighborhoods, as well as the coffee house scene in Greenwich Village around the same time. Meltsner focuses on his memories of scenes that may be familiar to readers conversant with that period in New York. Sometimes he just provides long lists of culturally significant places, figures, books, records, theater, and happenings to give a sense of the experience of the city in those days.
展开▼
