Sixties at 40: Leaders and Activists Remember and Look Forward / Edition 1

by Ben Agger

Overview

Based on recent interviews, this unique sixties book brings together the voices of the Left leaders who spawned the sixties movements. Many remain activists today, and experience and the passage of time allow them to transcend nostalgia to form more realistic perspectives on past, present, and future. They discuss the civil rights and antiwar movements, the political outcome of the sixties, patriotism, terror, and the role of young people in the future. Important gains were made during the sixties, but there were many setbacks, too, that influence today's voters, leaders, candidates, and our day-to-day realities. The sixties of this book are not simply a sweet memory of marijuana and album rock; there were many casualties, including innocence and youthful idealism. Agger concludes with reflections on the possibilities of a next Left, which was already faintly visible in young people's massive support of Obama's presidential candidacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594516917
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface, Acknowledgments, 1. Time It Was: Telling the Sixties Politically, 2. Timeline of the Sixties (Which Begin Earlier), 3. Port Huron and the New Left, 4. Bringing the War Home: Weatherman and Radical Dissent, 5. Love of Country, 6. Who Won the Sixties?, 7. Black Before White: From Civil Rights to Black and Brown Power and the Women’s Movement, 8. We Were Young Once: Our Children and the Next Left, 9. My Sixties at Fiftysomething, References, Index, About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Here are two useful and very different books offering insights on the storied decade of the 1960s. Agger (sociology, Univ. of Texas, Arlington) grew up in Eugene, OR , in the 1960s with a father who was a mentor to local civil rights activists. The family moved to Canada in 1969 for 12 years. Agger's personal story serves mainly to introduce and link themes; since 2004, he has interviewed 14 leaders from the era (both famous names like Tom Hayden and Mark Rudd and local leaders) and spreads their views richly throughout the book. Agger aims to "teach the Sixties" to the current generation—the children of the children of the Sixties—with an emphasis on politics rather than culture and counterculture, though sociocultural aspects seep into many of the interviews. A narrative time line provides a valuable overview of people and events. "Who won the Sixties?" is an underlying theme, and Agger and his interviewees argue whether the ultimate legacy of the Sixties was in fact the disappearance of the Left and a victory for conservatism. They also discuss the role of women in the patriarchal political movements of the time. Ultimately, this is an invigorating and hopeful book.

Library Journal

[A] useful and different book offering insights on the storied decade of the 1960s. … A narrative timeline provides a valuable overview of people and events. … an invigorating and hopeful book.”
—Library Journal

From The Sixties at 40:
“I was not governed completely by ideology, I was governed by experience ... and my experiences were contradictory.”
—Tom Hayden

“To a very great extent I would call the project of the sixties a democratization project. It’s still an ongoing and viable living practice in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.”
—Richard Flacks

“I don’t talk about myself as a Leftist, because we’re not a factor. We are not a political entity. I’m a union activist, I’m an environmental activist, a peace activist, but I wouldn’t say there is a Left.”
—Mark Rudd

“Obama’s campaign was a movement campaign, an insurgency—in large measure the product of a popular mobilization, passionate and well-organized, cross-demographic, the best of amateur politics harnessed to professional party intelligence.”
—Todd Gitlin

“The extent to which the Left is able to … hold Barack Obama accountable to a peace and justice agenda is the extent to which we move closer to a more democratic society and a more peaceful global existence.”
—Fran Beal

“The main thing I took from Camus was the idea that in this struggle for human betterment you had to walk a fine line so that you were neither a victim nor an executioner. And that, really, was very helpful going through all of the different twists and turns of the movement in the sixties.”
—Robert Moses

From the Publisher