where we were allowed the rare treat of firing Thompson submachine guns at paper humans—not in evidence then was even a glimmer of the allegedly radical lawyer who would help rebellious inmates striking out at centuries of racism through uprisings like the one at Attica. Filled with wonder, I was trotted around the FBI headquarters, and it would have been a stretch to guess that I would one day number among the enemies described in Hoover’s book, with special agents prowling around my apartment building, going through my garbage, looking for dirt because I represented the Weathermen who were willing to blow things up. That I would spend the majority of my life trying to translate into case law the language of moral outrage directed against nationwide school, housing, and employment segregation, the Vietnam War, and a jurisprudence system stanchioned in the status quo racism of America even after the historic Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision—none of that would have been easy to spot in me that day my family spent roaming around the nation’s capital as the wide-eyed guests of J. Edgar Hoover.
* * *
Growing up, I knew nothing of radical politics. I lived in the cool green shade of Major’s wealth. A conservative worldview was the only one available to me. But I don’t really remember much about that. The main thing I recall about Major was how much he loved my grandmother. He would do anything for her. The full realization that my father and my mother and my uncle (and subsequently my brother and I) were part of a package deal dawned on me only later in life, but even early on there was a sense that while we got to do fun things from time to time through Major’s connections, we were still and always the Siegels-turned-Steels (my father changed our last name when I was five), connected to the Warner name by the gossamer of marriage.
With Grandma Bessie as the conduit, Major’s money got spread around. She became the matriarch and fairy godmother of her own extended family, the Levys. There was jockeying for position—favored family and outliers. For those within the fold, Bessie’s marriage was a very fortuitous bit of good timing, because the Levys were at the beginning of a downward slide from a position of prominence in New York City’s garment industry. Bessie’s father, Moe, had created a chain of men’s stores that pioneered two-pants suits, or what people used to call “Moe Levys.” Sadly for the family, Moe’s flagship store was located near Canal Street, or maybe on it—I don’t remember—which ceased to be a destination for those who wanted to dress like the moneyed classes. Clothing stores were moving operations up to Fifth Avenue. The Levys’ fortune suffered because Great-Grandpa Moe and his two sons must have missed the memo.
When he married my mother, my father was a shy, skinny graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a rich and famous stepfather. Arthur, or “Artie,” as his friends called him, must have seemed like a very good catch. He was completely protected from the Depression, and had a managerial job waiting for him in the Warner Bros. movie theater empire. The job was in Milwaukee. After a few years my parents came back to New York. My father left the Warner Brothers office to enter into a partnership to run some Forty-Second Street movie theaters. When that deal didn’t work out, he opened two theaters in nearby New Jersey. Again failure. But from what I could tell, the good life went on unabated. My father was a mama’s boy, and Grandma Bessie had married about as well as a woman could. Ruthie, as everyone called my mother, quickly attached herself to Bessie, and all was well in a world that was otherwise falling apart right outside their door. My mother liked fine clothes, jewelry, and furs and, although she said otherwise, the parade of Hollywood stars seemed to thrill her. She was always ready to display her insider knowledge: “Clark Gable has bad teeth,” she loved to say.
* * *
Born in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital in 1937, I was brought home to a luxury apartment building called the Beresford, on the corner of Central Park West overlooking the Museum of Natural History. Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who, with Richard Rodgers, created some of the best-loved musical comedies ever produced on Broadway, lived in the apartment next to ours. German governesses took care of my brother and