Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties [Paperback]

Sara Davidson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520209109 | ISBN-13: 978-0520209107 | Publication Date: July 1, 1997 | Edition: 1

This is a compelling story of the experiences of three young women who attended the University of California at Berkeley and became caught up in the tumultuous changes of the Sixties. Sara Davidson follows the three--Susie, Tasha, and Sara herself--from their first meeting in 1962, through the events that "radicalized" them in unexpected ways in the decade after the years in Berkeley. Susie navigates through the Free Speech Movement and the early women's movement in Berkeley, and Tasha enters the trendy New York art and society scene. Sara, a journalist, travels the country reporting on the stories of the sixties.
The private lives that Davidson reconstructs are set against the public background of the time. Figures such as Timothy Leary, Mario Savio, Tom Hayden, and Joan Baez are here, as are the many young people who sought alternatives to "the establishment" through whatever means seemed worth exploring: radical politics, meditation, drugs, group sex, or dropping out. Davidson's honest and detailed chronicle reveals the hopes, confusion, and disillusionment of a generation whose rites of passage defined one of the most contentious decades of this century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"She has written personal histories that will demand and earn your attention and respect." -- Carol Felsenthal, About Books

From the Inside Flap

"The book is witty, sad, incisive, and totally clean of sociological cant or the pomposities of a certain kind of generalizing journalism. . . . It has the resonance of a good novel." --Dan Wakefield

"Sara Davidson is the liveliest historian of her generation."--Malcolm Cowley

"Sara Davidson is an expert witness. . . . Now, more than 10 years after leaving Berkeley, she has followed up on some of her friends, and presents an absorbing and carefully detailed account of their lives up until now, especially her own life and that of two others, Tasha and Susie. Every bit of it fascinating."--Diane Johnson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 381 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520209109
• ISBN-13: 978-0520209107
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #224,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Welcome! If you'd like to read an excerpt from Leap!, please visit my website, www.saradavidson.com. You can also get a free Leap! Workbook.

Now for the BIO:

Sara Davidson first captured America's imagination with her international best seller, "Loose Change," about three women growing up in the Sixties.

Sara grew up in California and went to Berkeley in the Sixties, where the rite of passage was to "get stoned, get laid and get arrested."

After Berkeley she headed for New York to attend the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her first job was with the Boston Globe, where she became a national correspondent, covering everything from the election campaigns of Bobby Kennedy and Richard Nixon to the Woodstock Festival and the student strike at Columbia.

Returning to New York, she worked as a free-lance journalist for magazines ranging from Harpers, Esquire and the New York Times to Rolling Stone. She was one of the group who developed the craft of literary journalism, combining the techniques of fiction with rigorous reporting to bring real events and people to life. Her work is collected in the textbook, "The Literary Journalists," by Norman Sims.

Sara moved back to California where for 25 years, she alternated between writing for television and writing books. The books tend to fall in the gray zone between memoir and fiction. She uses the voice of the intimate journalist, drawing on material from her life and that of others and shaping it into a narrative that reads like fiction.

In television, she created two drama series, "Jack and Mike," and "Heart Beat," which ran on A.B.C. She was later co-executive producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," wrote hundreds of hours of drama episodes, movies and miniseries, and in 1994 was nominated for a Golden Globe.

In the year 2000, her life began to unravel. She was divorced, her children were leaving for college and she couldn't find work in television. Following her intuition, knowing nobody, she drove to Boulder, Colorado for three months to be a visiting writer at the University of Colorado. She never drove back, and is piecing together a different life which she writes about in Leap!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyed it Even More the Second Time, September 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties (Paperback)

Sara Davidson's "Loose Change" is a brilliantly-written account of the Sixties as experienced by three young women coming of age. I bought this book when it first came out in 1977 and loved it. Recently, I came across "Loose Change" in a used book store and just couldn't put it down.
The Sixties were a time of great social upheaval, and I remember many of the major events. I went though college in the late 60s and early 70s. Even though my background is somewhat different -- Blue collar, conservative, Catholic, male, short-haired, Pittsburgh, and definitely never inhaled -- it was interesting to see the female, radical point of view. Like many others in that period, Sara, Susie, and Tasha search for life's meaning in a turbulent time in which the old values they grew up with have withered away.
You are there in the historical events and movements of that period -- the Antiwar movement, major student protests at Berkeley and Columbia, the bloodbath at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, the music of Woodstock, rural communes, free sex, and the terror of the Altamont Concert.
This book seems to get better over time because there is a greater contrast between today's world and the 1960s. The Antiwar, Womens' Liberation, and Civil Rights Movements changed the country and the world for the better, and drugs have changed things for the worst. And the sexual revolution.... well, you be the judge.
I like Ms. Davidson's rich writing style, as she places the reader right there, feeling and experiencing life with Sara, Susie, and Tasha, "warts and all." She's gutsy enough to talk about sexuality, a formerly taboo subject. Sara, Susie, and Tasha follow their sexual drives and suffer many bad love affairs, for which both the men and women share the blame.
I've also enjoyed a few of Sara Davidson's other articles and her biography of Rock Hudson. "Loose Change" is now historical, and it's so alive you can hear the music and the protest marches. This book is definitely worth five stars and I would recommend it to almost everyone, even my own daughter.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The chronicles of three Cal sorority sisters from the 1960s, May 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties (Paperback)

I loved this book! I've been dying to read this book ever since I read Larry Colton's "Goat Brothers" in 1994 and I was so happy when I found it on Amazon in 1997! As a recent grad from Cal (where I was also in a sorority), I definitely related to some of these women's college experiences, such as the strong friendships formed with some of my sorority sisters, and a few of the Cal traditions described in the book. Sara Davidson's descriptions of the lives she chronicled in the story were articulate and straightforward-it was one of those books where I could not put down until I was finished with it. The different paths the women took after college were bittersweet and at times heart-wrenching. I definitely recommend to anyone with an interest in women's experiences during the '60s.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In 1978 it inspired me, in 1999 it was bittersweet., July 9, 1999

By 

C. dunne "bdaycarol" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties (Paperback)

I saw the miniseries on TV in 1978 in a college dorm with my girlfriends. It so inspired us, that as we tearfully said our good-byes at graduation, "Loose Change" became our anthem to describe what we expected as our futures unfolded. In 1999, I saw an article about Sara Davidson in People magazine, and I remembered how much the story had meant to me twenty years before--so it was time to get the book. The book jogged memories of the issues and choices I faced in the '70s, and also reminded me how much those '60s trailblazers did for their younger boomer-counterparts. I think it's time for the author to do a follow-up on these women today. In the meantime, I'm sending this book to my old college girlfriends.