America in the early 1960s was a country in transition - an atmosphere of racial tension and Cold War paranoia contrasted with a vitality and optimism for the future. It was in this environment that a young Swiss law student found himself in Chicago. Derrick J. Widmer, attorney-at-law, studied law at the University of Berne and broadened his studies in 1962-3 with programs at the Universities of Chicago and Mexico. His first-hand account of living and studying in the land of opportunity - a place so distant from the post-War deprivations of Europe - is a personal history of living and loving the American way.