The first volume of Kreisky's memoirs, covering the 44 years from his birth to the Austrian State Treaty in 1955. A bit loquacious, it depicts Austrian politics of the 1920s and 1930s from the standpoint of a militant socialist, appalled by the Stalinist policy of helping National Socialism and by Socialist failures to take decisive action in Germany and Austria, regardless of risk. A personal document of an extraordinary life: active in the underground, he spent 21 months in different prisons under different regimes. Especially vulnerable as a Jew, he found wartime asylum in Sweden and returned to a political career in postwar Austria.
