Daniel William Zampino

The Sixties had been romanticized and vilified. Rarely had it been described from the circumstance of ordinary observer/participant. Thanks to an accident of the author’s birth, he had been caught up in something extraordinary. Severed Arms. Illuminated in the severing—by a policeman’s billie—of arms intertwined to corral and protect draft resisters.

The result? Five stories. Five windows into the story-teller’s growing up in the Sixties.

In a 1967 interview, Arnold Toynbee, who had visited the ‘scene’’ at Haight-Ashbury, was quoted as saying, ‘the hippies are a warning light for the American way of life.’ Even then, his words jumped out at me. Only an historian possessed of insight and power could extract such a convincing perspective from a phenomenon that was still unfolding. I was nineteen years old, and Toynbee’s conclusion seemed irrefutable. Visionary, even.

‘Warning light.’ Not a revolution, as we each - my friends and I - had claimed. Not something shattering. Simply a warning light.

With the great historian’s authorized perspective, I plunged head first into what would be an extraordinary phase in my life.