In this entertaining and informative memoir, University of Virginia alum Joel Gardner delves into the four most turbulent and transformative years in the history of UVA. Arriving as a total outsider in 1966, Gardner, a born and bred New Yorker, soon found himself immersed in a sheltered world of customs and traditions that had existed virtually unchanged for decades. Yet within his tenure, this genteel Southern culture of coats, ties, and party weekends would be irrevocably disrupted, as the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements at last caught up with “The Old U.”
With a sharp eye for detail and a canny sense of historical relevance, Gardner recreates the turbulent world of UVA in the late 1960s, a microcosm of the tides of change that swept the world. In these four short years, blazers and bourbon gave way to denim and demonstrations, changing the face of Mr. Jefferson’s University and forever altering the spirit of an American institution.