Robert Harlan

Many of his students called him “Uncle Bob”—don't ask me why!—when I was his research assistant in the early 1970s. That was the era in which I wore my hair long with a headband, and Prof. Harlan hired me as his R.A. because he liked my “hippyness,” and, after all, this was Berkeley! Bob Harlan changed lives, including mine. He supported my interest in history and the book as an artifact; he helped me find employment at the Kemble Collections at the California Historical Society, and later at...