But here’s the thing: I love homework. I don’t love being the bad guy my kids jeer when I remind them that it is homework time once again. I love bearing witness to the steady accretion of skill, until I notice that my younger son is suddenly reading fluidly, no longer requiring my assistance. I even enjoy the process of tweaking my older son’s math routine, again and again, until all the pieces — whiteboard, marker, dining table, checking your work — cohere. My grandfather Joseph Austerlitz — whose face I see reflected in my older son’s — left Vienna in 1936, not long before the Nazi Anschluss.

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Persons: Charles Darwin, —, Joseph Austerlitz —, Saul Austerlitz, Dutton Locations: Vienna, Nazi