In May 2005, Steve Wasserman stepped down as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review after a tenure spanning eight and one-half years. I have known him since he was a criminology student at the University of California in the 1970s, fresh from his activist training at Berkeley High. He had aspirations of studying law after earning his degree in those tumultuous years at the Berkeley School of Criminology, but turned to journalism instead. The first issue of our journal, Crime and Social Justice (Spring-Summer, 1974), contained his interview with Jim Larson, president of the National Lawyers Guild. During his second stint at the Los Angeles Times, he made the Book Review section into a site of lively debate and literary smarts, giving people like me an opportunity to review unconventional books dealing with controversial topics. He first contacted me as a reviewer in 1997, asking me if I would be interested in reviewing a biography of Elijah Muhammad, the notorious head of the Nation of Islam, implicated in the death of Malcolm X. It said a great deal about Steve's iconoclastic approach that he invited a white lefty to do this review, an indication that he was willing to take intellectual and political risks. Since then, he asked me to review books dealing with juvenile injustice, racism, the prison system, eugenics, riots, and the U.S. Left. He always ensured full freedom of ideas, but never hesitated to argue his differences. Moreover, he and his first-rate staff insisted on the highest standards of writing. From him I learned that the first and last paragraphs of a review must sparkle, but never at the expense of intellectual heft. We wish him well in his new job as a literary agent in New York.