The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Ann Charters (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: December 31, 2002

From civil rights to free love, JFK to LSD, Woodstock to the Moonwalk, the Sixties was a time of change, political unrest, and radical experiments in the arts, sexuality, and personal identity. In this anthology of more than one hundred selections of essays, poetry, and fiction by some of America's most gifted writers, Ann Charters sketches the unfolding of this most turbulent decade.

The Portable Sixties Reader is organized into thematic chapters, from the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-Vietnam movement, the Free Speech movement, the Counterculture movement, drugs and the movement into Inner Space, the Beats and other fringe literary movements, the Black Arts movement, the Women's movement, and the Environmental movement. The concluding chapter, "Elegies for the Sixties," offers tributes to ten figures whose lives-and deaths-captured the spirit of the decade.

Edited with an introduction by Ann Charters

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The fabled, too often trivialized sixties are open to endless interpretation, including a definition of the decade that slides into the seventies. In putting together this fresh and enlivening literary collection, Charters, a highly respected expert on Kerouac and the counterculture who came of age during that up-for-grabs, paradigm-altering time, sticks to a literal designation, thus uncovering the subtle, all-important roots of the more flamboyant flowerings of the era's distinctive, still alluring, and relevant sensibility. Charters has also wisely chosen to organize the selected essays, poetry, and fiction under thematic subjects, such as civil rights; women's rights; the sexual revolution; environmental issues; the antiwar, free-speech, and black-arts movements; and the use of drugs in pursuit of enlightenment. In combining the cultural with the political, Charters' first criterion is artistic, leading her to choose clarion works by the most significant of the decade's creative voices, including James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Susan Sontag, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsburg, Rachel Carson, Kate Millett, Nikki Giovanni, and many more, thus creating a vibrant collage of the best of a revolutionary time. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

A compulsively readable collection. -- San Francisco Chronicle

Absorbing...a collection to be read...seething with emotion and urgency... -- Seattle Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; 1ST edition (December 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142001945
• ISBN-13: 978-0142001943
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Reader!, October 18, 2007

By 

horrordave101 "dave" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I found this to be an exellent primer on the 60's. Not only are many of the big names covered like MLK, Timothy Leary, and Hunter S. Thompson but lesser voices are heard too. I also enjoyed the divisions of the book into sections like Civil Rights, Counter Culture, and Drug Culture. Along with the books mentioned in the introduction this Reader provides many directions to go in understanding the 60's.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but biased, July 13, 2011

By 

David Withun (FORT GORDON, GA, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This book is filled from front to back in all 628 of its pages with hate, prejudice, despair, disgust, delusion, sickness, love, happiness, faith, civility, truth, and humanity; in short, it is a wonderful compendium of writings from (and sometimes about) the 1960s in America and the experience of that turbulent decade did to the American mass consciousness. I wasn't there for the 60s, but I think that this book does a very good job of capturing the spirit of times as best as it can be captured. The only objection I might raise is that Charters is rather biased in her selections; I would have liked to have heard equally from the apparently conservative majority of Americans who voted Nixon into office as much as from the radical Left who opposed him; I would have liked to have read something in support of the Vietnam War and against Civil Rights just as much as the many writings which argue vociferously from the opposite position. It would have made for a more balanced read, I believe.

4.0 out of 5 stars ah if only this book was avaiable in audio!, December 24, 2011

By 

L (GAINESVILLE, VA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Have only had time to browse through this book and would love to read it, but alas have no time to sit and read but do have plenty of time in the car driving. LONGING for this and oh so many other titles to be on audio! I pray.