Steven J. Harper

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CROSSING HOFFA: A Teamster's Story
(Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books, June 2007)
"ONE OF THE BEST IN BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY AT THE NEW YORK BOOK FESTIVAL -- 2008"
-- Biography/autobiography: Honorable Mention

"ONE OF OUR FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2007!"
-- Chicago Tribune

"ONE OF THE SUMMER'S TOP FIVE BESTSELLERS" in Non-Fiction
-- at The Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois

"This wonderful book is one of a kind - part thriller, part history, and part love story of an unusual sort: of a son for his father and the very different life he led. Crossing Hoffa is gripping, tender, and intriguing - pure pleasure on every page."
Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent, Limitations, and numerous other books



On a spring evening in 1961, over-the-road trucker Jim Harper was en route from Mauston, Wisconsin to his home in Minneapolis. At 70 miles per hour, with a combined 60,000 pounds of man, machine, and material, he approached a curve along the Great River Road and hit the brakes. The tractor-trailer didn't slow. Harper's brakes failed. For the second time in two weeks his truck had been sabotaged.

In preceding months, Harper had led an insurgency in his Teamsters' Local 544 to clean up corruption among its leaders. His efforts drew the attention of Jimmy Hoffa, at the time focused on securing his right to lead the national Teamsters organization without government intervention.

Jim Harper had his reasons for confronting his local's leadership - a hard-scrabble childhood and a stint in Angola prison had left him seeking redemption. But Hoffa, under federal investigation for questionable financial dealings, had deep, dark secrets; the last thing he needed was a spotlight on Minneapolis.

Even after Hoffa personally told him to stop the crusade, Harper would not stand down. He could not. His perseverance beyond all rationality placed him in mortal danger as his friends betrayed or deserted him and his enemies tried to kill him.

Somehow, he survived. When he died forty years later, the artifacts of his union battle remained among his most treasured possessions, documenting the defining episode of his life. But behind what he had always thought was just an unsuccessful effort to follow Hoffa's announced agenda of "union reform" lay a saga of courage and intrigue - a saga he would never know.

He was my father, and this is his story.

STRADDLING WORLDS: The Jewish-American Journey of Professor Richard W. Leopold
(Northwestern University Press, January 2008)
"As he spoke, it was easy to forget that he would soon celebrate his ninety-third birthday. Today, he wanted to discuss his death."– Prologue

For thirty years after my last class with one of Northwestern University's most illustrious professors, Richard W. Leopold, I had maintained contact with him, just as hundreds of other students had. Many of those counting him as a central influence from their early years had risen to national prominence: Senator George McGovern, congressmen Richard Gephardt and Jim Kolbe, journalist Georgie Anne Geyer, Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Elliott Oakley, writer/director/producer Garry Marshall, Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal, and General Dynamics Chairman Nicholas Chabraja, among numerous others.

He had never married. By 2004, he was confined to a wheelchair and pesky tremors afflicted both hands. But his mind remained sharp as we talked during one of my monthly visits to his nursing home room. Surprisingly, he ventured for the first time into a deeply personal matter: the approaching end of his days.

"I am concerned," he said, "that no one knows the essential facts of my life well enough to write an accurate obituary when it is over."

I accepted his implicit challenge. Over the subsequent two years, we met every Sunday morning, eventually retracing his entire twentieth century journey. Along the way, we added my father-in-law, whose life had paralleled my former professor's. Born in the same year, 1912, and into Jewish lineages, both men grew up in secular homes. But the absence of any Jewish self-identification did not shield them from childhood anti-Semitism. They overcame discrimination to attend and succeed at Ivy League schools: after Princeton, Leopold received one of Harvard's first Ph.Ds in American history awarded to a Jew; after Yale, my father-in-law became one of only eight Jews in his medical school class of eighty-three at Western Reserve University. As members of the "Greatest Generation," they served with distinction as officers during World War II. When it ended, they resumed their climb to the top of their respective professions.

They persevered through a twentieth century Jewish-American experience that they and many others shared, but rarely discussed. As their lives ended, these two men told all of us their stories.