San Souci, Daniel

"I was born in San Francisco, arriving on my brother Robert's second birthday. I'm sure that everyone thought that this coincidence was wonderful, but I sometimes wonder if Robert liked sharing his birthday with a little brother who also moved into his room. It didn't take him long to figure out that I couldn't keep my hands off anything, so he had high shelves put on his side of the room and hid all the stools in the house from me. My father used to say that I could take any, thing in the world apart, but putting it back together was a different story.

"My father worke...