Frank O’Hara, Marilyn Monroe, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg—champagne-soaked postwar Manhattan and bohemian 1960s San Francisco come alive in Berkson’s memoirs.

Bill Berkson was a poet, art critic, and joyful participant in the best of postwar and bohemian American culture. Since When gathers the ephemera of a life well lived, a collage of bold-face names, parties, exhibitions, and literary history from a man who could write “of [Truman Capote's Black and White] ball, which I attended as my mother’s escort, I have little recollection” and reminisce about imagining himself as a character from Tolstoy while tripping on acid at Woodstock. Gentle, witty, and eternally generous, this is Bill, and a particular moment in American history, at its best.