Joseph Califano Jr. came barreling out of Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of a conservative Irish-American mother and a white-shirted Italian-American father who worked for IBM. He went to Catholic schools, to Harvard Law, to the Navy and then to a white-shoe Wall Street law firm.
Ambition and moral zeal were his propellants, and Califano never slowed down. His memoir, Inside: A Public and Private Life (Public Affairs; 539 pages), is as jam-packed and energetic as his life so far.
He was taken with John F. Kennedy's candidacy in 1960, mostly because the Senator was Catholic and anticommunist, like Califano's parents. He...
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