Abbott "Abbie" Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worchester, Massachusetts. His family was solidly American middle class: his father John worked as a pharmacist before opening a successful medical supply distribution company, and his mother Florence was a homemaker. For the early part of Hoffman's life, he followed the social mainstream. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1959 with a degree in psychology and then earned a master's degree at Berkeley. In 1960, at the age of twenty-three, he married his first wife Sheila, with whom he had two children. He and Sheila divorced in 1966.

The social changes that swept through America profoundly changed his perspective. He became involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, first volunteering to go to segregated southern states and stand beside blacks who were challenging racist practices and later organizing a cooperative in New York City to distribute crafts made by...