Against The Tides & The Times (on occasion)

Book excerpt: Jim O’Donnell, who wrote this book in the third person because he’s allergic to the perpendicular pronoun I, has had a “careen” rather than a career. After attending three colleges in four years and getting his MA from Fordham in history, Jim O’Donnell worked a smorgasbord of jobs in college teaching counter intelligence, newspapering at the United Nations, followed by a decade as a confi dential aide to a DA, council president, and strongest candidate for governor against Nelson Rockefeller. In the interim, he also served as director of Hubert Humphrey’s winning campaign for president in New York. In his last two jobs, he tried to ease the building of a nuclear plant on Long Island for over seven years and fi nally ended as a consultant to a company whose chairman became a major fi gure in the pursuit of peace with justice in Northern Ireland. He is presently at work on a second book on a future, , and perhaps last, pope. He admits to being lucky in being supported by a very patient wife, Elaine nee Bruck, of Ohio. They met in Japan and have four children and ten grands and numerous family and friends here and overseas. About this book, he says: it has its moments for the political and crime buff, the scholar, and philosopher as well as the historian. “We’ve been surrounded by good people all our life and remember some of them here; it’s too bad more of their character isn’t better known and didn’t rub off.”