Overview
As a Boy Scout, Peter Baird "fought" in the Cold War by scanning the skies over Moscow, Idaho for inbound Soviet aircraft. He fought other wars as well, with paralytic polio, rock 'n roll, his mother's cancer and his father's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from a World War Two gunshot wound.As an adult, Baird became a professional magician who gave shows across the country to benefit cancer research. He also became a trial lawyer who represented his wife before the United States Supreme Court in a freedom of belief case, Ernesto Miranda of the famous Miranda case, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. which had been infiltrated by government spies, and four Hare Krishna members charged with loitering.
As a man, Baird battled depression, made stupid mistakes, endured divorce, was accused of child abuse by his mentally ill daughter, suffered literary rejection, confronted herpes in Las Vegas, published a novel, and reconciled with his father as the old man descended into Alzheimer's.
Throughout, Baird wrote essays and stories - sometimes hilariously funny and sometimes profoundly serious - about life as he lived it, and law as he practiced it. They are all here in Protecting Moscow From the Soviets.
Winner of the 2009 San Francisco Book Festival Award for Compilations/Anthologies.
Synopsis
As a Boy Scout, Peter Baird "fought" in the Cold War by scanning the skies over Moscow, Idaho for inbound Soviet aircraft. He fought other wars as well, with paralytic polio, rock 'n roll, his mother's cancer and his father's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from a World War Two gunshot wound.
As an adult, Baird became a professional magician who gave shows across the country to benefit cancer research. He also became a trial lawyer who represented his wife before the United States Supreme Court in a freedom of belief case, Ernesto Miranda of the famous Miranda case, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. which had been infiltrated by government spies, and four Hare Krishna members charged with loitering.
As a man, Baird battled depression, made stupid mistakes, endured divorce, was accused of child abuse by his mentally ill daughter, suffered literary rejection, confronted herpes in Las Vegas, published a novel, and reconciled with his father as the old man descended into Alzheimer's.
Throughout, Baird wrote essays and stories - sometimes hilariously funny and sometimes profoundly serious - about life as he lived it, and law as he practiced it. They are all here in Protecting Moscow From the Soviets.