"Before They Disappear," a line from one of the author?s poems, recounts with humor and honesty the triumphs and sorrows of a life that spans much of the 20th century. From a three-bath, seven-bedroom house in Texas to a no-indoor-plumbing log cabin in the mountains of Northern New Mexico; from a sheltered childhood in a large and prosperous Jewish family to job hunting in the depths of the Great Depression; from New Deal liberal to several years...