if you're 19, a college student, or need some perspective, then this book needs to be read and digested. Kunen spits witty comments, gives anecdotes that are just plain hilarious, and while he's doing it, you're just a passive observer trying to wonder what could possibly happen next. a friend from school passed it on to me (the first addition, falling apart of course), and i immediately had to pass it on to a buddy of mine from Hopkins.

First, I loved this book. Kunen provides a wry and clever portrait of a time that was interesting.... and vastly different from my life in college.... which was at the same school as him (Columbia) and vaguely similar in other ways (rowing). Included in this book which is superficially about the '68 student uprisings at Columbia (due to a want to build a gym in Morningside Park (which was used predominantly by the Harlem's black community...) are also many notes about the coming of age of the books author, who as other reviewers mentioned, went on to be more than a marginal figure in the American left....

It is a shame that this book is out of print. You should be able to order it. Check the auctions on amazon-- that's where I got my copy. It is especially a good book for people going to college (especially Columbia!)

Easily one of the most readable and personal accounts of the radicalization of American youth in the sixties. I read it when it was first published and it blew me away. I followed Kunen's career on through his work with the Liberation News Service and his life in a New England commune and he did a magnificent job of chronicling our times.