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Summary
Summary
In America, no decade since the end of World War II has been as seminal in its historical significance as the 1960s. This work covers the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, student radicals, hippies and rock 'n' roll, looking how they interacted and the importance of each.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Unlike many 1960s books that cover the years between 1968 and 1972, Fischer?s (Nazi Germany: A New History) sprawling, tirelessly researched and opinionated new history takes in the whole epoch, with backward glances to the preceding decades. This leads him to entangle himself in the roots of the events that exploded in the ?60s, but it also provides a welcome depth. Obscure figures like the teenaged marketing whiz Eugene Gilbert get their due alongside John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and a great deal of ground is covered in thematic chapters. Fischer views the decade?s events through a conservative lens, spinning the melee of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago as an exercise in media bias and interpreting the explosion of youth culture?sparked by ?beatnik moles? who ate ?both [the] healthy and unhealthy roots? of the ?50s ?neo-Victorian morality??as a capitulation to narcissism and nihilism. Similarly, he takes a hard line with idealized movie rebels, but reserves his toughest criticism for those ?grandiose, inflated, doctrinaire, and ultimately self-defeating? villains: radical feminists. Fischer?s cranky tone gives this wide-ranging account an edge, but readers may wish he?d focused more narrowly. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Choice Review
Aside from the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, Fischer finds little to commend in the 1960s. A self-described Spenglerian, he sees today's US as decadent, and he believes that the sixties, more than any other decade, are responsible. According to Fischer, John Kennedy was a fraud, Lyndon Johnson "a self-absorbed and petty man," Richard Nixon an unscrupulous phony. Students in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement were "obnoxious" and "unruly," but that should come as no surprise, since "Young Americans were generally pampered, undisciplined, and immature." Rock and roll, consisting of "puerile emotions and superficial sentiments," destroyed refinement and taste. The masters of the country were a "corporate-technological machine" consisting of "cynical men with cold hearts and greedy appetites." Even Ronald Reagan, who had the good sense to denounce rioters and welfare recipients, could counter them with nothing stronger than "a warmed-over version of Americanism." As a result, the 1960s led to such evils as multiculturalism, affirmative action, and deconstruction. Fischer bases his research only in published sources, and his book's documentation is light and loose. More reliable is James Patterson's Grand Expectations (CH, Oct'96, 34-1156), which places the 1960s in the context of the postwar era. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General collections and public libraries. J. A. Hijiya emeritus, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| 1 Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 A Voice from the Silent Generation | p. 1 |
| 2 The Way We Were: Before and After the 1960s | p. 8 |
| 3 An Age of Protest | p. 14 |
| 2 Fault Lines in a Land of Perfection | p. 20 |
| 1 The Myth of a Perfect Beginning | p. 20 |
| 2 Immigration: More Pluribus Than Unum? | p. 23 |
| 3 The Flaws of Consensus Liberalism | p. 25 |
| 4 Beacon or Crusader: Splits in American Foreign Policy | p. 35 |
| 5 The Racist Blood-Knot in American History | p. 43 |
| 3 The Pig in the Python: A Generation of Vipers? | p. 53 |
| 1 Baby Boomers and Their Parents | p. 53 |
| 2 The American Horn of Plenty: Paradox and Portent | p. 56 |
| 3 The Emergence of a Teenage Subculture | p. 63 |
| 4 John F. Kennedy and the Camelot Image | p. 73 |
| 1 Kennedy the Man and the Leader: Image and Reality | p. 73 |
| 2 The Kennedy Administration: The Best and the Brightest? | p. 78 |
| 3 Eyeball to Eyeball: The World at the Nuclear Brink | p. 85 |
| 4 The Trauma of November 22, 1963, and Its Aftermath | p. 88 |
| 5 JFK: The Legacy | p. 99 |
| 5 Searching for the Promised Land: Black Civil Rights | p. 106 |
| 1 Sit-down Protests in the South | p. 106 |
| 2 Freedom Rides | p. 109 |
| 3 Voter Registration | p. 112 |
| 4 Black Nationalism | p. 125 |
| 5 The End of the Second Reconstruction | p. 133 |
| 6 Liberalism at High Tide Under Lyndon Johnson | p. 137 |
| 1 A Texan in the White House | p. 137 |
| 2 The Great Society | p. 145 |
| 3 Liberal Justice: The Warren Court | p. 159 |
| 4 From Great Society to Sick Society | p. 167 |
| 7 Vietnam and Protest | p. 170 |
| 1 Approaching a Quagmire | p. 170 |
| 2 Paying Any Price and Bearing Any Burden | p. 177 |
| 3 Hot Damn Vietnam: LBJ and the War | p. 181 |
| 4 Hell No, We Won't Go | p. 187 |
| 5 Nixon's War and Defeat in Vietnam | p. 200 |
| 6 The End of Victory Culture? | p. 206 |
| 8 The Crisis of 1968: The Fall of Liberalism | p. 212 |
| 1 A Speculative Stampede on Gold | p. 212 |
| 2 Losing the Streets: The Crisis of Law and Order | p. 215 |
| 3 The "Dump Johnson" Movement | p. 222 |
| 4 Thunder from the Right | p. 235 |
| 5 Miami, Chicago, and the Election of 1968 | p. 242 |
| 9 A Young Generation in Revolt | p. 252 |
| 1 America Awash in Rebellious Young People | p. 252 |
| 2 The New Left and Student Militancy in the 1960s | p. 257 |
| 3 The Catalyst: The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley | p. 260 |
| 4 From Protest to "Revolutionary Action" | p. 265 |
| 5 Students at War with the Establishment | p. 269 |
| 6 Radical Terrorism and the Conservative Reaction | p. 275 |
| 7 Black Student Militancy | p. 281 |
| 8 The Student Right | p. 288 |
| 9 Coda | p. 292 |
| 10 Countercultural Protest Movements | p. 295 |
| 1 Was There a Counterculture? | p. 295 |
| 2 The Myth of the Woodstock Nation | p. 298 |
| 3 Back to Nature: The Commune Movement | p. 312 |
| 4 It's the Music, Stupid! | p. 317 |
| 5 Counterculture into Consumer Culture | p. 331 |
| 11 Riding the Coattails of Revolt: Neglected Minorities | p. 336 |
| 1 Women's Liberation | p. 336 |
| 2 Radical Feminism | p. 338 |
| 3 Coming out of the Closet: Gay Men | p. 344 |
| 4 Brown Power | p. 346 |
| 5 Red Power | p. 354 |
| 6 The Minority Rights Problem: More Pluribus Than Unum? | p. 360 |
| 12 Peering Into the Historical Looking Glass | p. 363 |
| 1 Fault Lines Revisited | p. 363 |
| 2 Consumer Culture is Boomer Culture | p. 366 |
| 3 The Great Cultural Implosion | p. 368 |
| 4 The End of Shame and Guilt | p. 375 |
| 5 The Indigestible Sixties | p. 381 |
| Notes | p. 388 |
| Bibliography | p. 420 |
| Index | p. 439 |