"Footprints" introduces life's double shadow, a hidden force that can create or destroy. "Jubal," the forebear of music in ancient Hebraic tradition, is linked to this force, whose shadow motif joins the mind's unifying "Fides" (trust, fidelity) mythos-of-memory with its flipside, the divisive "Phobos" (fear, envy, ego) Logos-of-reason. The shadow has stalked humankind since The Fall while influencing art, love, intimacy, and philosophy; and, of course, music—from philharmonic to jazz. It enables science and mathematics as it appears in humankind's Either/Or"—"Us against Them" syndromes and cultural-divide-urges based on woke-fears of foolish hyperbole.
The memoir's Volume II, describes the author's senior year at UCLA and its fulfilling academic and social life before entering graduate school at UChicago where we learn of legendary professors; and surreal adventures between his cutting edge scientific experiments and the nation's 1960s protest movements —from Black power to anti-Vietnam War dissent, women's rights, pot and sex "lib"—all simultaneous with his Ph.D. work on the radiation chemistry of "free radicals." His advisors Jack Halpern (UChicago) and Edwin Hart (Argonne Lab), both experts in Talmudic reasoning guided his efforts barely 25 years after Oppenheimer and Fermi's atomic bomb project at the same UChicago.
"Footprints" will shed new light on the origin of today's world and, just perhaps, the meaning of earthly existence. Human-kind's next redemption is just around the corner in our growing "both/and" wisdom, quantum relativity, Jung's psychology, and Nature's God.
