Family and childhood in Finger Lakes, New York; recollections of religious influences on family; undergraduate training at Coe College and Princeton University; impressions of geology faculty at Yale; recollections of Adolph Knopf, carl Dunbar, Chester Longwell, Richard Foster Flint, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson; recollections of discussions of climate chage and continental drift at Yale; summer field training at Woods Hole under Libby Hyman; first academic appointment at University of Kansas. Accepts appointment at Columbia University in 1952; impressions of Walter Bucher, W. Maurice Ewing, J. Laurence Kulp; recollections of courses offered at Columbia; interest in radiocarbon dating at Lamont; recollections of paleontological work at Columbia, including impressions of Norman Newell and George Gaylord Simpson; early research programs in invertebrate paleontology and increasing interest in sea level change; impressions of Lamont research in marine paleontology, including the work of Allen BJ, David Ericson, and Goesta Wollin; interactions with Robert Menzies. Impressions as chair of Department of Geology at Columbia; begins research on paleoclimates; recollections of decision to leave Columbia for Brown University. Development of involvement in CLIMAP project; recollections of James D. Hays, Andrew McIntyre, and Nicholas Shackelton including Shackelton's contributions to marine stratigraphy; impressions of William Donn-Maurice Ewing theory of climate change; personal styles of researchers at Columbia and Lamont; recollections of Jacques Barzun. Impressions of Soviet research involving climate change; recollections of visits to Soviet Union and of interactions with Soviet researchers; impressions of related work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; recollections of research involving Milankovitch cycle, including work of Cesare Emiliani.