William L. O'Neil is a professor of history at Rutgers. The State University of New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960, and Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960's. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1966 to 1971 he had many contacts with New Leftists, had his classroom taken over by them on one occasion, was threatened by a graduate student during a faculty meeting, and witnessed a riot during which students and police exchanged tear gas canisters with each other. Most contacts, however, were far more civil, involving the exchange of ideas rather than chemical agents.