From the Back Cover
Few people saw as much or knew as many of the primary
figures of the '60s and '70s as David Obst. A journalist in
the maelstrom of the anti-war movement, he helped break
Seymour Hersh's Pulitzer Prize-winning My Lai Massacre story.
A behind-the-scenes operator, he baby-sat the Pentagon Papers
for Daniel Ellsberg. And as the hottest literary agent of the
period, Obst quickly sewed up deals with the Watergate
intelligentsia, including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and
John Dean. Given his insider status, Obst offers some
intriguing speculation on the identity of Deep Throat.
Obst's knack for being at the center of every interesting
story makes Too Good to be Forgotten a rare, you-are-there
joy ride across the political and cultural frontier of that
era. Surviving a youth of nuclear drop drills, Sputnik, and
the Cuban Missile Crisis, Obst went on to study Chinese in
Taipei. There, while working as an impromptu translator for
GI's trying to meet women in a local bar, he heard firsthand
what was happening in the Vietnam War. Returning to America,
he immersed himself in the anti-war movement and the
counter-cultural zeitgeist of the '60s. Through Obst's eyes,
we see the casual mix of idealism and excitement of the
times: the 1968 Democratic Convention, where he barely
escapes the beatings of Chicago police in Lincoln Park; the
Black Panther rally, where he receives a "Honkies for
Huey" button; and the 1972 Republican Convention where
Abbie Hoffman slips him an illegal substance that hits at the
very moment Richard Nixon steps to the podium to accept the
nomination.
A definitive look at the baby boomer's coming of age, Too
Good to be Forgotten puts you right in the thick of some of
the defining moments of the time the kids tried to take the
country away from the grown-ups. David Obst provides us with
the memoir of a generation.
