Turbulence

Welcome to Rutgers University, 1970. This New Jersey college campus, like others across the country, is a microcosm of the turbulent times that would transform America forever. This book centers on a group of students who must confront their personal, academic, and social challenges as the world around them take its first steps toward the 21st century.

 

Danny Watkins is the student advisor to a dormitory full of freshman students. His driving passion is to graduate and become a famous journalist. He writes for the Daily Targum, the student newspaper. Standing in his way is Jim Morris, his mercurial editor, who doubts Danny's ability to succeed, and assigns him stories that do not match his ability.

 

After an important news story goes disastrously wrong, Danny is fired from the newspaper and loses his scholarship. He risks everything in the last gasp trip to NYC in an effort to recruit Abbie Hoffman, a controversial activist, to speak on the campus. If he fails, he must drop out of school and face being drafted to serve in the unpopular war in Vietnam.

 

Through the eyes of these college students, we see the political and social upheaval that defined this decade: the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the sexual revolution. It was an era of peace, love, and war, and all three came together in universities like Rutgers.