A farm boy from the mountains of North Carolina, Rufus Edmisten could not have been prepared for the halls of power in Washington, D.C., during the Vietnam War era, as young men burned their draft cards and pro-cannabis factions held “smoke-ins” in the capital. A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill graduate, he got a law degree at George Washington University and landed a job as counsel to U.S. senator Samuel J. Ervin, Jr. This led to Edmisten’s appointment as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee—he personally served Richard Nixon the first ever subpoena of a sitting president by Congress. Returning to North Carolina, he served as Secretary of State and Attorney General before retiring from public life to lead charitable organizations. Written with humor and candor, his memoir recalls the cultural contrasts of American life in the 1970s and 1980s, and affirms that the business of government is to enable us to live together peacefully.