American Encounter

This is the story of one man's impression of life in the Great Society. Foot-loose and fancy-free he follows the lead of his insatiable curiosity, taking the armchair traveler on a memorable junket. The book is no Baedeker. From his arrival (when he winds up in a hotel that has been freshly raided as a place of questionable repute) until his last backward glance at Kennedy Airport (as his home-winging plane rises for its trans-Atlantic flight), the days and nights of his journey are filled with adventure, people, humor and heart... For whether he is exploring the canyon which is Wall Street, or the dusty and treeless playgrounds of Harlem, whether he braves the swirling traffic of a well-regulated metropolis, or the back lanes of a Southern town gone mad with lynch spirit, his story of the American Way moves swiftly - and with a forthrightness that will charm the reader. He narrates his American Encounter with an open-minded freshness and with a sharp eye that penetrates the smog of big-city living and big-city headlines. Born in Berlin in 1924, Walter Kaufmann was adopted at the age of two by parents who fell victim to the Nazis when the boy was fifteen years old. The lad managed to escape to Australia. There he lived until 1955 and in that year, a man grown, he at last returned to the city of his birth... The long, lean years in between were spent in fruit farming, as a soldier during the war, as a street photographer, a docker, a seaman. It was during this time that he began to write and a first novel, Voices in the Storm, has since been published in several languages. A second book was followed by a series of articles about Japan where he visited extensively. All of his writings reflect the diversified and rich experience of his life and his travels...