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TO RACE THE WIND: An Autobiography by Harold Krents

TO RACE THE WIND: An Autobiography

By

Pub Date: June 20th, 1972
Publisher: Putnam

The most unusual best thing about Harold Krents' story of the first 25 years of his life -- he's blind -- is his determination to meet the world only on sighted terms not in spite of his disability but as if it didn't exist. Thus you'll find him saying to one of those offensively curious people who asks him how he shaves ""I just follow the dots."" Actually Krents has managed to participate in everything -- from playing football with an older brother as a youngster to going through Harvard and Harvard Law School. Not that it was all easy from the time when his very slight vision (he was a premature infant) blanked out altogether in one eye and then the other -- particularly his first years at school when acceptance by the teachers seemed as hard to secure as those of the other children with their more than proverbial cruelty. But then his parents -- you'll like them too -- never let him use his blindness as an easy excuse (even if he did think he could get away with cheating once on the premise that since he couldn't see the teacher, the reverse would work). Krents' story was used in the stage vehicle Butterflies are Free -- it has, because he has, a remarkable, cheerful resilience.