Ithaca Diaries: Coming of Age in the 1960s - Paperback

by Anita M. Harris (Author)

How does an impressionable 17-year-old girl deal with Fat Phil the Wet Kisser and a revolution at the same time? Ithaca Diaries is a coming of age memoir set at Cornell University in the tumultuous 1960s. The story is told in first person from the point of view of a smart, sassy, funny, scared, sophisticated yet naïve college student who can laugh at herself while she and the world around her are having a nervous breakdown. Based on the author's diaries and letters, interviews and other primary and secondary accounts of the time, Ithaca Diaries describes collegiate life as protests, politics, and violence increasingly engulf the student, her campus, and her nation. Her irreverent observations serve as a prism for understanding what it was like to live through those tumultuous times.While often laugh-out-loud funny, they provide meaningful insight into the process of political and social change we continue to experience, today. Author James McConkey has called the book "a remarkable achievement." According to historian Carol Kammen, Ithaca Diaries is "earnest, honest and funny. Historically important in addition to being an engaging coming-of-age story."

Author Biography

Anita M. Harris is an award-winning journalist, author and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA As a reporter, Anita covered topics ranging from to law, justice, health science and technology for Newsday and the MacNeil/Lehrer Report (now the NewsHour) of PBS. She has served as a commentator for National Public Radio, written a regular column for MSN.com and currently blogs at NewCambridgeObserver.com. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Anita completed a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and fellowships at Boston and Tufts Universities. She has taught writing and communications at Harvard and Yale Universities, at Simmons College, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and in the MBA Program at Babson College. Currently, she is managing director of the Harris Communications Group, the PR and digital marketing firm she founded in 1998. A new edition of her first book, Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, was published in 2014.