Ground Money

June 1, 1986
In this gem of a book, the founder-editor of Mother Jones recalls growing up in New York City and on an idyllic Adirondack estate, the only child of wealthy parents who married late, and his painful relationship with his powerful, respected father. Despite his benevolent intentions, Harold Hochschildthe politically liberal chairman of a multinational firm that made its money by polluting, strip-mining and desecrating land that its inhabitants regarded as sacredintimidated his son; and as the son grew older, he did all he could to separate himself from his father's way of life. They fought "not like wrestlers but like diplomats''; their arguments were always polite and controlled, as if they were disagreeing over something trivial instead of over the course of young Hochschild's life. In this sensitive memoir, the so-very-correct German-Jewish-American parent is contrasted with his genial brother-in-law, a retired, decorated Czarist air-force pilot, who used his wife's ample funds to lavish money on more attractive women. Yet, as Hochschild senior mellowed in his 80s, his son grew to tolerate, appreciate and finally love the man he had feared all his life.