Souvenirs of a Blown World ─ Sketches from the Sixties, Writings About America, 1966-1973

The year was 1966, and fresh off the heels of his controversial debut novel Running Scared, Gregory McDonald was hired to write for the Boston Globe with the instruction to "God and have fun and write about it, and if you end up cut and bleeding on the sidewalk, call the office." Through vivid reportage, he follows a war-battered young soldier through the steamy quagmire of Vietnam, attends a baroque bash in Dallas for the opening of John Wayne's two hundred and first picture, watches Jack Kerouac booze himself into hallucinatory eloquence, and runs through the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Captured in kaleidoscopic prose, Souvenirs of a Blown World distills the world of America's revolt that shook old institutions to their foundations ... the time we must relive and understand if we are to understand and live through our own.