In 1960 they were the winners...and then the rules changed. They were the golden boys at Pi KA, the jock frat house at Berkeley. They spent their days on the playing fields, their nights with icy kegs and willing women. Twenty-five years later one of them set out to discover how the boys of the sixties were faring as men in an explosively changing world. Had they survived the great cultural and social upheavals of almost three decades?
Goat Brothers is Larry Colton's riveting narrative of five men and the forces that shaped them, men who epitomize the triumphs and frustrations of their generation:. Loren Hawley: charismatic, athletic, bold, he was a would-be Donald Trump...and destined for the slammer. Jim van Hoften: the only Goat who spent more time at the library than at the keg. He became a top gun in Vietnam, and then an astronaut on the Challenger. Steve Radich: a football star, dynamic and irrepressible. He was a Marine's Marine in Vietnam, and signed on for another tour - on the front lines of the sexual revolution. Ron Vaughn: also a football star, and riddled with doubts over the big secret he could never share, a secret that drove him to years of isolation. Ron Vaughn was black. Larry Colton: he dreamed not of a B.A. but of pitching in the big leagues, of the beautiful wife he'd marry. He achieved both...briefly...then stumbled through the next twenty years coming to grips with the way the dream ended.
Their lives - troubled, heroic, and heartbreaking - show us who we really were, and how we became who we are today.