the support at the University of Chicago went beyond the   scholarly. The year after he was hired, his wife gave birth to their first child, Andrew. One day, just after Andrew turned a year old, he came down with a slight fever. The doctor diagnosed an ear infection. When he started vomiting the next morning, his parents took him to the hospital. By the following day he was dead of pneumococcal meningitis. Amidst the shock and grief, Levitt had an undergraduate class that needed teaching. It was Gary Becker-a Nobel laureate nearing his seventieth birthday-who sat in for him. Another colleague, D. Gale Johnson, sent a con- dolence card that so moved Levitt that he can still cite it from memory. Levitt and Johnson, an agricultural economist in his eighties, began talking regularly. Levitt learned that Johnsons daughter was one of the first Ameri- cans to adopt a daughter from China. Soon the Levitts began proceedings to do the same, a girl they named Amanda. In addition to Amanda, they have since had a daughter, now three, and a son, nearly one year old. But Andrews death has played on, in various ways. The Levitts have become close friends with the family of the little girl to whom they donated Andrews liver. (They also donated his heart, but that baby died.) And, not surprisingly for a scholar who pursues real-life subjects, the death also informed Levitts work. He and Jeannette had joined a support group for grieving parents. Levitt was struck by how many children had drowned in swimming pools. They were