"I was born two weeks before the Bolshevik Revolution into an immigrant family that was part of New York's large German socialist community." So begins Robert Schrank's compelling autobiography. From Young Communist League member and union activist to management consultant for global corporations, Schrank has lived a life based on empathy and principles, and as an activist in some of the major political and social upheavals of this century.

Through his story the reader experiences a community of political and intellectual passion being torn apart as it struggles to deal with the rise of Nazism and the decline of the old radical movement. Drawing on his FBI files - 750 pages of material ranging from intrigue to Mack Sennett comedy - Schrank brings to life the events of Party membership and of his role in the rise of industrial unions in the 1930s and 1940s.

A rebel in his own land, he was expelled three times from union office; and in a landmark First Amendment case (Schrank vs. Brown) the State Supreme Court twice returned him to membership. Convinced by the early 1950s of the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union, he broke with the Party. Yet he remained faithful to the ideals of his radical upbringing, even as he joined the corporate world of his former enemies.