Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory

In Claremont Boy:My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory, Joseph Steinfield shares humorous, insightful, and often poignant recollections spanning more than half a century. The author recalls what it was like to grow up as part of a small Jewish community in a New Hampshire mill town, but the book includes much more. Readers will meet, and perhaps recognize from their own lives, grandparents and other relatives from Eastern Europe; influential public school teachers; some public figures whom he has known, Julia Child among them; and a host of other fascinating people from New England and beyond, including a Hebrew-speaking Muslim from the Northern Caucasus Republic of Adygeya and a P.L.O. leader from Jericho in the West Bank.

Originally written over several years for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript of Peterborough, New Hampshire, these essays are united by the author's sense of irony and the unexpected. Steinfield's true stories will produce laughter, an occasional tear, and a reminder of the universality of life's experiences. Whether writing about a caring neighbor, an encounter with governmental bureaucracy, or the surprise endings that often occur in life, Steinfield has taken his storytelling skills and used them to recount a life well lived. Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory will resonate with readers everywhere.

Joseph Steinfield was born and raised in Claremont, New Hampshire, where he graduated from Stevens High School in 1957. He is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School. He was formerly a partner at Hill & Barlow in Boston and is currently a member of the Boston firm of Prince Lobel Tye LLP, where he specializes in litigation and media law. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and an adjunct professor of law at Boston College Law School and University of New Hampshire Law School. He has also lectured at several universities and has taught American law at two universities in Russia. He and his wife, Virginia Eskin, live in Boston and in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.