Chapter Twelve. We’re All Accountable

Peter had a good sense of humor. I don’t mean to describe him as so jocular that he was always cracking jokes. That wouldn’t be true. Still, he was far from humorless or uptight. I was not surprised when I read in Doris Drucker’s memoirs, Invent Radium or I’ll Pull Your Hair (The University of Chicago Press, 2004), to hear that the future Mrs. Drucker’s mother referred to him not necessarily very flatteringly as “that happy-go-lucky Austrian, Peter Drucker.” Her mother can probably be forgiven. Peter was not well-known in those days and she wanted her daughter to marry a Rothschild.

By the end of my second year at Claremont, I had decided that on earning my doctorate, I would leave business and join academia. ...

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