Younger Than That Now was, for me, a personal journey with kindred spirits back to the fire of my youth. Ruth and Jeff have generously opened up their most impressive friendship to the reader describing with both poignant earnestness and incisive humor their personal success at transcending differences. If they had merely focused on the amazing accomplishment of a heterosexual male and female managing a platonic friendship over time and space, it would have been newsworthy. But they wove in familiar names of our generation who have combined the social ideals of the 60's while honing entreprennurial savey reflective of our times (is there anyone who has NOT succumbed to the lure of Ben & Jerry's ice cream?) coupled with a delicious recounting of the regional idiosyncratic differences between northerners (ok, Yankees) and southerners, and threaded with the yarn of historical perspective. The writing reflected rich, descriptive prose that hung sensuously like the moss on a live oak coupled with clean, crisp journalistic insights. This book was a sheer delight to read. As a (yes, I admit it) born and raised Yankee--and middle-aged baby boomer--who has lived my entire adult life in the South, I felt like I had truly come home in the pages of this book both in the people that I met there and the places they inhabited.

Younger Than That Now is a wonderful book, and much more than a saga of the 'sixties. It's a beautifully written, honest and moving story of two seemingly different people who achieve unity by struggling to understand each other and how they grow and change as a result. Ruth and Jeff pull no punches in their stories, and they come across with all the foibles that make up human nature, and in doing so, inspire the reader to see that there are no mistakes in life, just lessons. And even more than that, the book is a parable of the evolution of culture, and ultimately civilization as we see that how we affect each other as we negotiate the minefields of youth, relationships and politics can help us build a life we feel proud of.

Younger Than That Now is a wonderful book, and much more than a saga of the 'sixties. It's a beautifully written, honest and moving story of two seemingly different people who achieve unity by struggling to understand each other and how they grow and change as a result. Ruth and Jeff pull no punches in their stories, and they come across with all the foibles that make up human nature, and in doing so, inspire the reader to see that there are no mistakes in life, just lessons. And even more than that, the book is a parable of the evolution of culture, and ultimately civilization as we see that how we affect each other as we negotiate the minefields of youth, relationships and politics can help us build a life we feel proud of.