Born into a Jewish bourgeois family on November 27, 1913, in Berlin, Germany, Lewis Coser soon rebelled against the upper-middle-class life provided to him by his parents, Martin (a banker) and Margarete (Fehlow) Coser. As a teenager, he joined the socialist movement, and although he was not an exceptional student and disliked school, he read voluminously on his own. When Hitler came to power in Germany, Coser fled to Paris, where he worked odd jobs to sustain a meager existence. He became active in the socialist movement, joining several radical groups, including a Trotskyist organization called "The Spark." In 1936, he was finally able to secure better employment, becoming a statistician for an American brokerage firm. He also enrolled at the Sorbonne as a student of comparative literature but later changed his focus to sociology.

Coser's studies were interrupted by World War II as he was detained by the French police...