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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without Gutenberg?

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is bookworm.

Well, today I have three writers.

They have put together a book called Buffalo Trace, a threefold vibration.

They, all three of them, went to the same graduate school in English at what was called

the State University of New York at Buffalo.

What is it called now?

University at Buffalo.

No more SUNY, no more SUNY.

And lo and behold, not only did the three of them go to graduate school at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

I was an undergraduate at that blessed place.

And you see, the marvelous thing is that Buffalo seems to have been the happy recipient of something called the miracle years.

Why? Can you tell this story, James Morrison, also known as Jim Morrison?

Well, for decades, in fact, over a century, the University of Buffalo was a private institution.

But in the early 1960s, it became a state university under the auspices of Rockefeller.

Apparently, there was money then for higher education, a circumstance that we have not encountered in recent decades. And in fact, there was a lot

of money. So Rockefeller hired a man named Al Cook to put together the best English department

...