Jim liked to say jokingly that he came to Princeton for this good reason: At a Hill School dance, he had met a girl who (shocked!) said she couldn’t understand why anyone would not go to Princeton. So he did. He said that he “more or less” majored in reporting for The Daily Princetonian, and he “worked” for The Newark Star-Ledger one summer, mainly reading novels.
He survived Army basic training and then reported for, and later ran, a weekly Army newspaper in Trieste, Italy. There he married the lovable Elda Zuzek. In time they would have “three nifty children, and then six nifty grandkids.”
He earned a Ph.D. in history at Johns Hopkins (where he recalled that he was “lucky enough to have a superb adviser”) and then spent most of his teaching career at Penn. He taught virtually the same European history survey course that he said he’d barely passed at Princeton! And he was never sure whom to cheer for at Penn-Princeton games.
He wrote six books, including The Human Story: Our History, from the Stone Age to Today; and his memoir, So Far, So Good, in which Princeton figures.
Jim died Oct. 26, 2016, depriving the class of one of its most engaging, accomplished, and modest classmates.