I have been out of the mainstream of American life for four years serving in an active, yet very remote, corner of Africa, I have decided however to make virtue of incompetence and —- like Rip van Winkle — present a kaleidoscope of impressions on my rediscovery of a deeply changed America.

When I left this country there had been no Watts, no Newark or Detroit, no fires ten blocks from the White House or machine guns on the Capitol steps. Berkeley was just Berkeley, not a harbinger of turmoil to come. We were about to pass our most important Civil Rights bill and Martin Luther King's impossible dream was perhaps possible after all. Vietnam was becoming more serious, though hardly a national trauma.