Moses (“Moe”) Finkelstein was a child prodigy, not least in maths—or math, as he would have called it, since he was raised in upstate New York, where he graduated with a BA from Syracuse University in 1927, at the tender age of fifteen. By the age of seventeen, he had added an MA from Columbia University, where it was, thanks mainly to the inspiration of W. L. Westermann's lecturing, that he conceived an ambition—much deferred in its realization—to do research for a doctorate in ancient Greek, Roman, and Greco-Roman history. His dissertation was published in 1952: Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, 500–200 B.C.
In the quarter century between 1927 and 1952, a very great deal happened, personally as well as politically and academically, in Finkelstein's life: he taught at New York's Cooper Union; he became politically active on the Far Left, campaigning for, among other causes, Russian...
