Customer Reviews

The Sixties

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This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

Terry H. Anderson did an exceptional job in his book delineating how a myriad of causes and movements got started and were conducted throughout the 1960's. Politically, the sixties were the most turbulent decade in America's history. Anderson took eight years to meticulously research and write a most informative book, explaining the chain of events that took place beginning in 1960 with a lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and ending with the end of the Vietnam War. This was not an easy task, considering many of the different movement organizations were not well organized, had no membership lists, and relied on small underground newspapers that were not published on a regularly scheduled basis. Anderson wisely noted that one can look back on the decade and glean from it much good for society that is still with us today; such as, the improvement in civil rights for minorities in America, and an awareness to improve the environment. One can also find social ills spawned by the decade that still plague American society today such as, the pernicious use of illegal drugs, and the sharp rise in teen-age pregnancy rates. Anderson took a different approach than most other historians who researched the sixties. He did not look at the decade from the standpoint of the leaders of the various movements, nor did he focus his attention on movement organizational history. Instead, Anderson's book is more of a national study of the sixties. In his approach, Anderson actually traced the chronological development of activism as it swept across the country, and how different movements allied with one another and/or became outgrowths of preceding struggles. In addition, he explained how activism spawned a completely new counter culture near the end of the decade. Thus, Anderson's book is an extremely useful social and political historical guide to the 1960's.

Anderson astutely traced how activism started with the struggle for civil rights that college students joined in the South. The sixties was also an age of television, and students were disgusted by the injustices and bloody violence against Blacks that they witnessed in news stories on television. Anderson noted that this was the catalyst that caused many White students to leave the safety of their college campuses, and travel down south on Freedom Rides to help Blacks fight the inequities of the Jim Crow laws. This activist desire to change America's status quo swept up both coasts, taking hold at elite universities where students created and joined liberal organizations. Once men started to go off to fight in Vietnam in 1965, activism started to change in two ways. First, besides just being involved in the civil rights struggle, activists took on the new cause of also demonstrating against the war. Secondly, activism spread to all the liberal cities across the country with large universities, including America's heartland. Although Anderson found that the New Left ideology came from many different influences, it was the ideas espoused in the Port Huron Statement, which typified many activists' dreams for how they wanted to transform American society.

In December of 1961, Robert Haber a University of Michigan student and president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), along with other members of a steering committee, understood that the organization needed a manifesto to express its political and social ideals. In June of 1962 at a campsite in Port Huron Michigan, 43 SDS members and a few other activists spent five days debating a draft manifesto written by Tom Hayden, a student at the University of Michigan and editor of its newspaper. What eventually emerged was the Port Huron Statement, which examined "American politics, economics, racism, and foreign policy; the nuclear issue; the role of students; communism; and the themes and values of SDS" (62). The first line in the statement embodied the reason why students in the sixties took to becoming activist. "We are people of this generation bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." Anderson's research indicated that many activists believed the manifesto's significance was far reaching. The Port Huron Statement repudiated all the socio-economic and political values of the 1950's. It also proposed a new idealism that Hayden claimed was a bit to the left of the Democratic party for the sixties such as, advocating "social programs to fight poverty, establish national health care, help family farmers, and develop equal educational opportunities" (63). By the 1972 Democratic Party convention, many of the ideals of the Port Huron Statement found their way into the party platform. They were placed there by a plethora of minority delegates from various movement streams that had finally attained recognition in a major American political party. "Compared with 1968, the ratio of female delegates at the 1972 convention tripled to almost 40 percent, blacks tripled to 15 percent, and those under the age of 30 soared from 2 to over 20 percent" (397). They nominated the most liberal candidate in the party's, Senator George McGovern, who was soundly defeated by President Richard Nixon in the election.

In conclusion, although many movement activists took the loss of the 1972 election as a bitter defeat of their sixties idealism, Anderson astutely proved that activism did not die in 1972--it took a slower more peaceful pace. New activist movements, more recently termed "pressure groups," owe their birthright to the movements and activists of the sixties such as, Gray Power, a movement of senior citizens that was formed to advocate for their demands. The recent and intense focus on "global warming" is certainly an outgrowth of the sixties activists' concerns for the protection of the environment. Finally, Anderson's book showed that although various sixties movements such as the SDS, Hippies and Yippies may have disappeared, activism is a part of the lifeblood of both of America's political parties. Since the sixties, Americans have been more receptive to questioning socio-economic, political, and religious institutions.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, Civil Rights history.

When I first had to read this book for class I thought that it would be bad. After I read it I saw that it is a great book. The author looks at the 1960's in stages and covers virtualy every bit of that time period. He makes it fun to read about this time and it is a very scholaly look too. All in all I give it 5 stars and wish I could give it more.

The Sixties, by Texas A&M University historian Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on an engrossingly readable journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson charts the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers and its contentious politics, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture.

Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the idealism of the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing discord over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also thematically navigates the decade's many currents of social change, including the anti-war movement, the civil rights struggle, and the plethora of liberation movements that drew inspiration from it. From the lunch counter sit-in of Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Power movement at the decade's end, Anderson illustrates the brutality of the backlash against civil rights, the disillusionment and radicalization of some of the movement's youth, and the eventual triumphs that would change America forever. He also discusses women's liberation and the feminist movement, as well as the students' rights, Chicano, Native American, gay rights, and environmental movements.

The Sixties is comprehensive, yet concise and, in many places, gripping. It shows how the decade had the effect of radically transforming life in America and challenging the unequal status quo that has characterized most of the nation's history. Despite the overwhelming and often violently repressive backlash provoked by these changes, the Cultural Revolution and the liberation movements have left an indelible imprint upon the country.

This well written book covers one of, if not the most turbulent change riddled decade in fairly recent history. Readers will follow the development of the hippies and the splinter group, the Yippies (Youth International Party); the assassinations of public figures and the growing unrest on campuses and the outside world at large.

Sixties fashion and culture are also discussed. The music of that decade changed to reflect the times. 1960-1963 still had the 1950s influence and many girl groups emerged during this period. Folk was on the rise and Pete Seeger; Peter, Paul & Mary; Bob Dylan; the Kingston Trio and many other folkies were becoming more musically vocal against war and societal ills.

In 1964 the Beatles arrived in America and during 1963-64 the Beatle influence was resounding around the world. By 1965 to the decade's close, many groups, the Beatles included experimented with different styles of music and sang of the then current issues, e.g. anti-war songs. Stephen Stills of CSN/CSNY fame and prior to that, of Buffalo Springfield fame sang the 1967 Anti-War Anthem "For What It's Worth." The decade that started out seemingly innocent (1960-63) and evolved into a wonderful era of excellent music; cool cars like Falcons and Coronets and closed with a successful moon voyage and music festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival and Woodstock (both 1969) is nicely covered in this book.

Since I was a child in the 1960s I am intrigued by the political processes of that decade; by the civil rights movement, Viet Nam, and the three presidents of that decade. I have read a number of books and was looking forward to reading The Sixties. I was disappointed. Mr. Anderson tilts his approach and inevitable editorial comments too far to the left and leaves the reader with the sense that the book had a political agenda rather than the book being an effort to provide an objective rendition of one of the more critical decades experienced by the United States. He writes very well; but there were times that the bias in favor of hippies, campus protestors, etc., was just too much to take. I have the benefit of sitting in "judgment" of the sixties (the decade, not the book) with total objectivity since I was only a kid at the time and based on all of my reading this book is simply too biased to the left to be taken seriously. I would certainly not have high school or college students read it if the purpose is to give an accurate historical perspective on the sixties.