Outside the Box
Adventures of a Jewish Red Diaper Baby
About the Book
Acclaimed author JAY FELDMAN takes us on a memorable journey of adventure, from growing up in a Communist family during the McCarthy era, to being arrested in the historic Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, to living on a rural commune, to playing baseball in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution – all the while holding up a mirror to American life and times.Praise for
Outside the Box
“Feldman tells a good story, and he has a lot of them. Here are some stand-out moments from a fascinating life: red diaper baby, early hippie, frequent activist and communard, and perpetual musician and lover of baseball. It’s a pleasure to learn new things about an old friend.”
— Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy
“In a voice lucid and engrossing, like listening to a close friend tell you about events that happened before the two of you knew each other, Feldman delivers an engaging life story full of humor, love, pathos, drama, terror, and irony, but one that is also ultimately redeeming.”
—Clarence Major, author of Dirty Bird Blues
“In Outside The Box, Jay Feldman gives you a front row seat to culturally formative moments in America’s recent history. You’ll be entertained by Jay’s humor, charmed by his dedication to baseball and music, and warmed by the relationships he formed over the years.”
—Dana Topousis, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, University of California, Davis
"Jay’s memoir hit me with a force I didn’t expect. Part of that is personal. Jay and I shared summers at Camp Kinderland in the 1950s, a place where Jewish/socialist consciousness wasn’t taught so much as lived….I lost touch with Jay after our Kinderland days and didn’t see or hear from him for nearly sixty years. Our lives spun off in different, but overlapping directions….Reconnecting after all that time made reading his memoir feel less like picking up a book and more like recovering a shared history I didn’t realize I’d been missing….One unexpected pleasure of the memoir is how his romance with the Brooklyn Dodgers sits alongside all the political upheavals, the communes, the folk music, and the activism. Baseball becomes an emotional home base, a reminder that even the most politically engaged lives are stitched together by private devotions….For anyone who wants to understand the radical left from the inside — not as abstraction, but as lived experience, Outside the Box is a great read. For those of us who were there with him, back in the day, it’s more of a homecoming."
— Mike Klonsky, Hitting Left Radio