 Finkelstein grew up in Borough Park , then Mill Basin , both in Brooklyn , New York , where he attended James Madison High School . In his memoir , Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother , witness to the <unk> atrocities of World War II , felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam . One childhood friend recalls his mother 's " emotional investment in left @-@ wing humanitarian causes as bordering on <unk> " . He had " <unk> [ her ] <unk> " , a trait which he admits rendered him " <unk> " when talking of the Vietnam War , and which <unk> him with a " <unk> @-@ than @-@ thou " attitude at the time which he now regrets . But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother 's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one 's life — as a virtue . Subsequently , his reading of Noam Chomsky played an important role in <unk> the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor . 
