COMING 2026!
How Did I Get Here?
A Memoir of the Baby Boom Generation
These are tales of the baby boom generation, the slice who created the upheavals of the 1960s: radicals and hippies, civil rights marchers and war protesters. The stories are my personal accounts of my generation’s experience, spanning my suburban origins in the Fifties, rebellion in the Sixties, and counterculture explorations in the Seventies. Next came a tenacious journey of return to the mainstream, hard won success in the Establishment, and twenty-first century aging.
by Ken Kann
Praise for Ken’s last book, My Father’s ALS: A Son’s Healing Journey
“a must-read as we contemplate life’s meanings and the unknowns that may confront any of us.”
— Rabbi Ted Feldman, Petaluma
“a quiet and moving account of how being needed as a son led to his becoming more fully a man.”
— Dr. Elizabeth Anderson
“a must-read for anyone who is faced with the task of caring for and supporting a loved one with a tragic, progressive illness. There is a bounty of instruction, stoic wisdom and comfort within its pages.”
— Nathan M. Bass, MD, PhD
“this book will touch your heart as you travel through the fifteen-month journey of a son’s deepening love and respect for his father.”
— Rob Kann, Ken's Younger Brother
“a gripping account of one family and one son trying to cope with a father's ALS. The predicament is dire, the stories are absorbing, the characters are vivid, and the writing is beautiful.”
— Mary Ann Wittenberg, wife of ALS patient and author Harry Wittenberg and board member at the ALS Network
“It’s a tale with many dimensions told with novelistic confidence”
— Peter Booth Wiley, Author and Publisher
About Ken
Kenneth Kann was a UC Berkeley historian in 1979 when his father Sam was diagnosed with ALS. Ken immediately discovered that the youth uprising of the 1960s and 1970s had left him unprepared for Sam’s devastating illness. After years of clashes, Ken faced helping his father Sam encounter the dread disease ALS, the subject of his forthcoming book My Father's ALS: A Son's Healing Journey. After Sam died in 1980, Ken changed careers, became a successful litigation attorney, and later was a director of the government agency that administers the California court system. He married and had a daughter. He has written two popular history books: Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: the Story of a California Jewish Community (Cornell University Press, 1993) and Joe Rapoport: the Life of a Jewish Radical (Temple University Press. 1981).
