It's July 1972, four years after the tumultuous and riot-torn Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Republican Richard Nixon is seeking re-election, and a different kind of Democratic party - spearheaded by young people, feminists and antiwar activists - meets in Miami Beach to nominate the populist peace candidate George McGovern.
Acclaimed author and diarist Richard Grayson is 21, and he and three other college students from Brooklyn and Queens have trekked to the convention after they'd gotten Mikey, one of the group, elected as an official delegate. Grayson's diary entries, at once naive and knowing, provide a fascinating look at this seminal moment in American politics.