A dual portrait of the half-Jewish former Secretary of Defense and his African-American businesswoman wife recounts their experiences with racial and religious intolerance throughout the mid-twentieth century.
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William S. Cohen, born in Bangor, Maine, was the eldest son of a Jewish father and a Protestant Irish mother. Janet Langhart, an African-American, was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana by her single parent mother, a Southern Baptist. The book draws fascinating parallels between the histories of two people from different regions, races, and religions, as both are witnesses to and targets of the social tensions of the day. Opposites in so many ways—in color, faith, and culture—seemingly a bundle of contradictions, they meet in 1974, become friends, and eventually fall in love. They were married on Valentine's Day 1996.
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