Looking Back at My First Eighty Years

This volume offers a fascinating, impressively detailed, account of the
professional and personal life of a prominent historian of Latin
America. It covers his youth, contacts with a young Leonard Bernstein,
and his education at Boston Latin School and Harvard.

He served in WWII, rising from private to master sergeant, ending up in
a three-man military intelligence unit on Okinawa. There he held in his
hands the first aerial photos of atomic-bombed Hiroshima, and was an eye
witness to the surrender of Japanese holdouts.

In rising from college instructor to department chair Potash recounts
the conflicts and tensions that make up academic life. His two-year
leave with the State Department was a career transforming experience,
turning him eventually into a best selling author on the the military's
role in Argentine politics. Potash describes his experiences working
with Nazi files as part of an investigating commission created by the
Argentine government. Known for his expertise, Potash is frequently
consulted in times of crisis by the Argentine media and his name has
become a household word in that country.

Potash also recalls his courtship and marriage and relationships with
his two daughters. Readers have dubbed the manuscript "hard to put down."