Too Good to Be Forgotten: Changing America in the '60s and '70s

The author wonderfully describes his experiences during the tumultous years of 60s-70s and skillfully weaves his observations about all the events. The book is a very easy and quick read. But the best part is the information it packs about all the events of those times (Vietnam and My Lai, Chicago convention, Watergate..), the government's reaction and the effect on student psyche. What will leave the reader amazed at the end of the book is, how a person could have been at so many places at the "right" time! A truly wonderful work!

This book was written by a man who has done and seen things that most of us only witness in the movies. It is exciting as well as touching and informative and a must read by those of us under 30 who want to enjoy ourselves while learning about one of the most exciting times in our country's history. This book should be recommended reading for every college student. I loved it!!!!!!

Obst's book is charming and revealing of not only himself but his -- our -- times. Although the media have focused on his "DEEP THROAT" revelations (and beat up on him unfairly, I think), the real story is how this "Forest Gump/Zelig" guy moved through all our lives and what he saw. The love story(ies) are touching, and the portraits of people like Ellsberg and Sy Hersh are important historically.

The Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times," couldn't apply more aptly than in Obst's tale of his life experiences during the formative stages of the boomer generation. His stories, told with a refreshing sense of humor, provide new insights about an entire generation. As a boomer myself, the attitudes he describes -- fearing atom bomb attacks, opposing the Viet Nam War and the adult generation that brought it to us, openness about sex and drugs -- bring feelings of nostalgia and, as O'Rourke suggests, embarrassment at the same time. This is a quick and enjoyable read about someone who began as a quite ordinary guy from Culver City, and ended up at the center of the My Lai Massacre story with Seymour Hersh, the Chicago 68 Yippies riot with Jerry Rubin and Abbe Hoffman, the Pentagon Papers with Daniel Ellsberg, and Watergate with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Robert Redford, and even John and Mo Dean. He's Forrest Gump, all right, but with a reflective 60's kind of attitude.

I was born too late to experience the sixties and seventies firsthand. But Obst's book seems, well, *real* -- it's a firsthand account unblemished by the cynicism and disillusionment that I sense in other chronicles of that era. He also has this subtle humor that makes the book a pleasure to read...a vestige of '60s insouciance, perhaps. In any case, Obst was uncannily *there* -- an active participant in the counterculture. He was at the Chicago riots, the People's Park protests at Berkeley, a Black Panther rally. He was integral in breaking the My Lai massacre story and the Pentagon Papers. And he has some extremely interesting insider speculation on the identity of Deep Throat. If only they assigned "Too Good To Be Forgotten" in high school history class -- the stories about Yippies, Watergate, My Lai, Ellsberg -- I surely would have remembered learning about this then.