From right to left : an autobiography / by Frederick Vanderbilt Field.

1. 645 Fifth Avenue -- 2. Lake Mohegan -- 3. The elegance of High Lawn -- 4. Trees, branches and twigs -- 5. The best education money could buy -- 6. Extracurricular Harvard -- 7. The direction is set -- 8. Socialist -- 9. A job and travels -- 10.China and the Philippines -- 11. More of the Far East -- 12. The Institute of Pacific Relations -- 13. Politics and the IPR -- 14. Red hill -- 15. Lessons in Imperialism -- 16. Moving left -- 17. the Communist Party -- 18. An American peace movement -- 19. The nineteen-forties -- 20. Things warm up -- 21. I hold you in contempt -- 22. The McCarren hearing -- 23. Guest of the government -- 24. Going to Mexico -- 25. The Lattimore case -- 26. In Mexico to stay -- 27. Our daughter Xochitl -- 28. Reminders of the past -- 29. An indian-summer interlude -- 30. A new interest - archeology -- 31. The agenda of today's meeting.

"Frederick Vanderbilt Field (April 13, 1905 – February 1, 2000) was an American leftist political activist, political writer and a great-great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, disinherited by his wealthy relatives for his radical political views. Field became a specialist on Asia and was a prime staff member and supporter of the Institute of Pacific Relations. He also supported Henry Wallace's Progressive Party and so many openly Communist organizations that he was accused of being a member of the Communist Party. He was a top target of the American government during the peak of 1950s McCarthyism. Field denied ever having been a party member but admitted in his memoirs, "I suppose I was what the Party called a 'member at large.'" - from Wikipedia

"Of all the books so far written by prominent members of the Communist Party of the United States, From Right to Left is certainly the most extraordinary. In an open and honest accounting, the great-great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt describes the events of a long and colorful life, from his childhood upbringing in the midst of luxury in a Fifth Avenue mansion with seventeen servants and his student days at Hotchkins and Harvard University to the boardroom of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (where he was an invited guest) and his running battles with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He describes his jail sentence for contempt of court for refusing to reveal the names of the contributors to the Party's bail fund, which he administered, and his departure for Mexico to avoid the harassment of Red-hunting Congressional committees. All this - including his professional career as an expert for the Institute of Pacific Relations and later as an archeologist in Mexico - is told with urbanity and humor without a touch of malice, with unwavering adherence to his political philosophy, and with no regrets for the loss of the fortune that could have been his." - from dust jacket.