Peter Gabor Ernster

Jousting with Windmills Peter Gabor Ernster

In "Jousting with Windmills" (volume two of a trilogy) Peter Ernster charges full tilt into his intrepid legal and business career-his steed, confidence, his armor, a good brain. His career commences in the mid '60s "humping" freight cars in a New Jersey switching yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad while studying law (and later working on that railroad's bankruptcy!). After clerking for a federal judge in NYC and several years at a major NYC law firm, he becomes an international lawyer and later the international trouble shooter for a top U. S. multinational company, negotiating diverse, often tense international business deals (in three languages) in the cities of Europe and the Developing World. Dead honest, full of self-analysis and a fair amount of mea culpa, the memoir never flags. Along the way Ernster as a law clerk tactfully explains the antics in a porn film to a strait-laced judge preparing for an obscenity trial, learns about the business of chicken sexing in Belgium, and combats post-colonial economic nationalism, indigenous opportunism, byzantine governmental regulations and corruption. Always willing and curious, he gains knowledge from a Nigerian street peddler, a "tribal" mystic, a maharajah, the mayor of Bombay, a self-made Turkish industrialist, Chinese officials, among the many intriguing characters he encounters. Traveling the globe has its downsides. He misses his wife and sons, dines solo hundreds of evenings in foreign cities and mainly works alone. The work is difficult, and his efforts sometimes seem Quixotic and come to naught. Daunted but not defeated, when he breaks a lance, he picks up another and rides on. He also faces challenges within the company and to his integrity, unwilling to go along to get along. Throughout, Ernster's recall of his many adventures, capturing both place and time, is fascinating.