A leading scholar of English romanticism and literary theory and criticism, Hazard Adams writes of a lifetime as a student, a teacher and an academic administrator. The child of academically-minded parents, both teachers at Cleveland's Hawken School, Adams tells of his family's experiences at Hawken and later Seattle's Lakeside School, then his Marine Corps service and education at Princeton and the University of Washington. In addition to an illuminating account of his academic career--his experiences researching and teaching in Ireland, his administrative work in the founding faculty at the University of California's Irvine campus, and finally his experiences under the first endowed professorship in the humanities at the University of Washington--the memoir also voyages into memories of family, friends and colleagues and offers singularly well-informed comments on the current state of higher education and the academic experience.