The Sixties
by Terry H. Anderson
List Price:
Our Price: $42.54
You Save: $14.46 (25%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $3.25 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Terry H. AndersonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-05-06
ISBN: 0321421671
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Longman
Book Reviews of The Sixties
Book Review: Excellent look at the 1960's
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
20th Century Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in 20th Century Books
Route 66: The Mother Roadby Michael Wallis
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 1992-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.89
Sweet and Low: A Family Storyby Rich Cohen
Picador; Published: 2007-03-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.13
Price in other shops:
When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreamsby Bob Greene
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2008-05-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.62
Price in other shops:
Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star Stateby Randolph B. Campbell
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $155.33
The Dodgers Move Westby Neil Sullivan
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1989-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.95
Price in other shops:
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bushby Kevin Phillips
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2004-09-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.95
Price in other shops:
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnamby H. R. McMaster
Harper Perennial; Published: 1998-05-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.36
Price in other shops:
My Father the Spy: An Investigative Memoirby John H. Richardson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-08-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
My Father the Spy: An Investigative Memoirby John H. Richardson
Harper; Published: 2005-08-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.59
Price in other shops:
A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906by Simon Winchester
PBS; Harper; Published: 2005-10-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.64
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
America in the Sixties--Right, Left, and Center: A Documentary HistoryPraeger Paperback; Published: 1998-12-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $30.00
Price in other shops:
Moving On: The American People Since 1945 (4th Edition)by George Donelson Moss
Prentice Hall; Published: 2009-11-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $57.50
Price in other shops:
Visions of America: A History of the United States, Volume 2by Jennifer D. Keene, Saul T Cornell, Edward T. O'Donnell
Prentice Hall; Published: 2009-07-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $65.50
Price in other shops:
Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (Library of American Biography Series) (3rd Edition)by Harold C. Livesay
Longman; Published: 2006-03-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Marylandby C. Fraser Smith
The Johns Hopkins University Press; Published: 2008-05-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $17.00
Price in other shops:
The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, Volume IIby Alan Brinkley
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 2006-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $45.00
Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Cultureby Lewis A. Erenberg
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1984-11-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.13
Price in other shops:
Black Like Meby John Howard Griffin
NAL Trade; Published: 2003-05-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.05
Price in other shops:
The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!by Otto Bettmann
Random House; Published: 1974-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.65
Price in other shops:
A Rumor of Warby Philip Caputo
Holt Paperbacks; Published: 1996-11-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.58
Price in other shops: