What Happened to Me: My Life with Books, Research Libraries, and Performing Arts is a personal memoir, providing insight into the world of research libraries and particularly colorful librarians in the U.S. from the 1960s through the 1990s. It focuses largely on the authors own experiences in leadership positions at Marlboro College, The Newberry Library, The Johns Hopkins University, The New York Public Library, and Syracuse University. Told partly as an exploration of predestination and free will, the story begins with the authors childhood in a Christian fundamentalist environment, and goes on to recount frankly his distinctly secular coming-of-age experiences through the Navy, the arts world in New York City, the Vermont scene of the 1960s, his many years of involvementsurprising to himin some rarified academic and research circles, the philanthropic world of New York, and the integration in later years of personal interests in music, local community, family, and classical music and musicians.