He now lives in Berkeley, California, where he works as a building contractor and documents early Native American sites in the Bay Area. An outdoor enthusiast and animal lover, Schwartz worked on a Pennsylvania Dutch farm for two years before heading west to find higher mountains. Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature (’73). Richard Schwartz is a historian and the author of Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley Earthquake Exodus, 1906 Berkeley 1900 and The Circle of Stones. America, often chasing his ideals of freedom and democracy through grand, dramatic gestures. Industrious, influential, and daring on and off stage, Curtis lived the highs and lows of celebrity in late 19th c. Curtis rose to stardom as the first American Jewish actor to portray a Jewish character on an American stage, using his charisma and comedic talents to overcome common stereotypes and prejudices of the time. Curtis (RSB Books, April 2017, $29.95 HC, Distributed by Heyday Books), author and historian Richard Schwartz tells the fascinating life story of Jewish immigrant actor M.B. Schwartz brings forth these long-forgotten people from their resting place, and does so with such skill as a storyteller that we can, for a time, straddle two worlds and sense their profound continuity.In his latest book, The Man Who Lit Lady Liberty: The Extraordinary Rise and Fall of Actor M.B. Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley shows how deeply we share the emotions and motivations of our ancestors whether she be a Native American girl trapped as a Berkeley domestic, a Civil War veteran gossiping and reminiscing his way down Shattuck Avenue in a horse-drawn wagon, or an African American dairyman whose keen observations bring him riches in a community that embraced him as a town founder. Although the world these wise and colorful characters inhabit is in so many ways different from ours, their spirit rings true to our modern sensibilities. The seventeen stories Schwartz tells here remind us of an often-overlooked reality: that the face of humanity of the past is the same as our own.
The intimacy he has developed with men and women of nineteenth and early twentieth century Berkeley blurs the fact that these people and events are of another time. In Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley, author Richard Schwartz seems to have leaned so far over the magic hole of history that he fell in and lived with the people he studied.
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