Days of Splendor, Hours Like Dreams: Four Years at a Small College in the Still North (1963-1967)

In the 1960s, a young American president helped initiate the civil rights movement, captured the imagination of a nation with the establishment of the Peace Corps, launched the space age, nurtured the birth of the computer/digital age, and began the escalation of a war in Southeast Asia that exacted a horrific toll on the lives and emotions of his countrymen. Sheltered by the foothills of the White Mountains from the world events swirling around it, Dartmouth College resplendently approached 1969-the 200th anniversary of its founding as a school for Native Americans. As the smallest of the Ivy League schools, it was known for its dedication to a rigorous undergraduate education, its isolation from urban centers and sports prowess, and the intriguing manifestations of its all-male culture. In Days of Splendor, Hours like Dreams, author and 1967 Dartmouth College graduate Charles "Chuck" A. Hobbie offers a detailed, frank, and unpretentious memoir. Hobbie remembers the splendor and the fullness of his undergraduate days in the last decade of Dartmouth's all-male culture. He recounts the minutiae of his courses; friendships with classmates; his dates; and the faculty; academic, social, musical, and sporting events; the extraordinary beauty of the college's location; and his evolving affection for the remarkable school where hours passed like dreams.