BABY BOOMER Craig Reem’s upbringing in Los Angeles is a reflection on the life, loss, and laughter of a boy who walked toward Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s and ended up at Sears. His family’s early abandonment by his father awoke a five-year-old to the emerging turbulence of the new decade. He became an active player as both an inquisitive journalist and traveling chronicler beginning in the 1970s. This prepared him for fatherhood at the dawn of the 21st century, an effort of love and direction he wanted to correct from his own upbringing. By watching deeply and participating passionately, Reem draws from his diaries and reporting, interviews, and experience to bring to life the tragedy, tumult, joy, and energy of the times. First came a decade that would change the world, and then a new decade that would change him.