In 1949 the Hertzbergs, including young Hendrik and his sister, Katrina, moved upstate from New York City to a hundred-year-old farmhouse with a barn, surrounded by cornfields and woods, in Rockland County. (Katrina now directs after-school programs in Rockland County public schools.) Hertzberg graduated from Suffern High School after a semester as an exchange student in Toulouse, France. (Total immersion taught him the language so well that by the end of the term he was “thinking in French,” Hertzberg says. “It’s one reason I’m not in favor of bilingual education.”) French politics were hot: the Algerian war was on, and de Gaulle was coming to power. At a demonstration in Toulouse, Hertzberg was tear-gassed for the first time. - http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/01/hertzberg-of-the-new-yorker?page=all