RISKS takes the reader into unfamiliar communities, widely diverse cultures, and very challenging political territory. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Claassen's political, sexual, and spiritual identities evolved in unpredictable ways. During those two decades, the author worked as a civil rights organizer in the South and a laborer on an Israeli kibbutz. He took to the road as a long distance hitchhiker and walked onto the New York stage as an actor. Claassen joined an Oregon tree-planting cooperative, served in Kenya with the Peace Corps, and became a resident of an intentional Quaker community. He then traveled to Central and South America as a peace activist and a journalist.