Lives in Between

This remarkable work, first published ten years ago, is a model of what multicultural, multidisciplinary scholarship should be. In a virtuoso study of three widely different yet compellingly similar human stories that begin in the late nineteenth century and end in the mid-twentieth, Leo Spitzer considers what he calls the "predicament of marginality" at a time when mainstream bourgeois culture proclaimed the virtue of assimilation; and he boldly addresses the social and moral anguish faced by subordinate peoples trying to adjust to dominant societies. Each of the three families spawned prominent figures: the best-selling author Stefan Zweig, the engineer and abolitionist Andre Reboucas, and the mayor of Freetown, Cornelius May. Yet each suffered terribly, and Spitzer offers a brilliant analysis of the historical, sociological, and psychological bases of their experiences.