Summary

In Chapter 1, Ruben Blum was an American historian, who formerly taught at Corbin College in Corbindale, New York. Now retired, Ruben wanted to believe his profession had made him more aware of the relationship between history and politics.

The day after Pearl Harbor, Ruben married his “high-school sweetheart,” Edith, and was “drafted into the US Army” (14). After the war, he attended CUNY. Though he loved literature, he studied history. Not long later, he was “the first Jew ever hired by Corbin College” (15). He was, perhaps, the only Jew on campus. Ruben had what the critic Van Wyck Brooks called “‘a usable past,’” or a history that could give him “meaning in the present and direction for the future” (15).

After his hire at Corbin, Ruben, Edith, and their daughter, Judith, relocated to Corbindale, where they were “a nuisance” and “a curiosity” (17).

Over the years...