Marty, a budding writer, and a group of his friends graduate in 1964 from a small town high school in northern Virginia, all promising each other to attend their 50th reunion. Observing his friends at the prom, Marty recollects the rebellious and defiant school years that for many of them had been demanding beyond their youth. As decades pass their paths diverge and they emerge from the influence of their parents, many of whom experienced the barbarity of World War II. Eventually, the anticipated reunion approaches and they must face the changes the time brought to their lives. What became of them and how did they get there? Did they catch the Nazi war criminal hiding in Latin America as they all committed to before the graduation? Will the activist, the global executive and the poker player settle their differences? How did the lawyer, the doctor, the Navy commander, the scientist and Marty deal with the traumas of the past? Were the homeless alcoholic, the handyman and the gay CIA agent with his math-teacher partner able to start new lives? Will the Vietnam Vet attend?Their life stories full of diverse and overlapping plots, crises and triumphs, conflicts, loves and friendships prove the wisdom of Marty's high school commencement speech. He predicted that not all of them will become whatever they want because not everybody is dealt the same cards or the same card-playing skills. When they meet at the 50th reunion, he traces their lives since the graduation. The leader of the group and the link keeping them together over the years, Marty is the real author of The Class of 1964, telling the story about himself and his friends.

The mysterious, highly influential hidden world of Yale’s secret societies is revealed in a definitive and scholarly history. Secret societies have fundamentally shaped America’s cultural and political landscapes. In ways that are expected but never explicit, the bonds made through the most elite of secret societies have won members Pulitzer Prizes, governorships, and even presidencies. At the apex of these institutions stands Yale University and its rumored twenty-six secret societies. Tracing a history that has intrigued and enthralled for centuries, alluring the attention of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Skulls and Keys traces the history of Yale’s societies as they set the foundation for America’s future secret clubs and helped define the modern age of politics. But there is a progressive side to Yale’s secret societies that we rarely hear about, one that, in the cultural tumult of the nineteen-sixties, resulted in the election of people of color, women, and gay men, even in proportions beyond their percentages in the class. It’s a side that is often overlooked in favor of sensational legends of blood oaths and toe-curling conspiracies. Dave Richards, an alum of Yale, sheds some light on the lesser known stories of Yale’s secret societies. He takes us through the history from Phi Beta Kappa in the American Revolution (originally a social and drinking society) through Skull and Bones and its rivals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While there have been articles and books on some of those societies, there has never been a scholarly history of the system as a whole.

The author's columns of the antics of her four offspring in small-town middle-America were only the beginning. While teaching English and German for 18 years, she took students to Washington DC and the N.Y. World's Fair as their sponsor, saw her children out the door while teaching at Batavia High School and West Aurora High School in the Chicago suburbs, and then completed a Masters of Theology from Bethany Theological Seminary. From there she went to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, focusing on Syro-Palestinian Archaeology, spending 10 summers in Israel and Jordan. It was at Chicago that she met her current husband, they now live in Trophy Club, TX. From then until her retirement in 2010, she was Sr. Technical Editor for the Flora of N. America project. Now retired and in her 80's, the author felt it was time to revisit these stories to relive these fun-filled years once again and make them available to her extended family, friends, and anyone that enjoys the daily humor of family life.

Members of the Yale College class of 1964—the first class to matriculate in the 1960s—were poised to take up the positions of leadership that typically followed an Ivy League education. Their mission gained special urgency from the inspiration of John F. Kennedy’s presidency and the civil rights movement as it moved north. Ultimately these men proved successful in traditional terms—in the professions, in politics, and in philanthropy—and yet something was different. Challenged by the issues that would define a new era, their lives took a number of unexpected turns. Instead of confirming the triumphal perspective they grew up with in the years after World War II, they embraced new and often conflicting ideas. In the process the group splintered.In Class Divide, Howard Gillette Jr. draws particularly on more than one hundred interviews with representative members of the Yale class of ’64 to examine how they were challenged by the issues that would define the 1960s: civil rights, the power of the state at home and abroad, sexual mores and personal liberty, religious faith, and social responsibility. Among those whose life courses Gillette follows from their formative years in college through the years after graduation are the politicians Joe Lieberman and John Ashcroft, the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt, the environmental leader Gus Speth, and the civil rights activist Stephen Bingham.Although their Ivy League education gave them access to positions in the national elite, the members of Yale ’64 nonetheless were too divided to be part of a unified leadership class. Try as they might, they found it impossible to shape a new consensus to replace the one that was undone in their college years and early adulthood.