In the autumn of 1973, a freshman “revolutionary” arrived on a college campus, eager to finally engage in a war that he had only watched from the sidelines. But the flames of protest were guttering out and a new world was already taking shape. The revolutionaries he had so admired were either dead or moving on. The Vietnam War was winding to an inglorious close and even Richard Nixon was teetering on the edge of resignation. An Acquired Taste is the tale of young man adrift, a person who arrives far too late to the party and finds himself suddenly among strangers. It is a story of existential bewilderment, the kind we all experience when our dreams are abruptly dashed against the rocky shores of reality.