What's especially admirable, however, is that no matter how much crap he had to endure, Swainson kept his sense of humor and kept bouncing back and rebuilding his life, right up until the big one felled him in 1994. (Compare that to some of today's wimps.)

The second book is more joyous and more fun. Lawyer Dean Robb, still working his head off for good causes at age 86, has just collaborated with his 25-year-old son on an autobiography: Dean Robb: An Unlikely Radical . Robb, a farm boy from Illinois, went to law school at Wayne State in the 1960s. He looked like a Republican.

But instead he emerged to become a crusader for civil rights, for workers screwed by their employers, and for virtually all the good guys against all the baddies. When he was middle-aged he, moved up to Suttons Bay in 1971, where he defended pot-smoking kids against pot-bellied sheriffs, came down occasionally for great civil rights cases, and still found time to do some serious trout fishing, women chasing and have one hell of a time. I drove up and had dinner with him Saturday night; he has more energy than I do, and his book (available at LostPrairiePress.com; $24.95) shows it.

You should read it, and the Michigan Center for Stem Cell Biology should order him cloned.

> Email Jack Lessenberry