Stuck In The Sixties Review
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books
Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books Review
Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books Feature
Red states versus blue states. Metro versus retro. North or South, East or West. Pundits, politicians, and social scientists love to carve out categories in an attempt to make sense of political and social divisions that run through the American landscape. As the home of nearly 300 million people spread over approximately 3.7 million square miles of earth, the United States poses a monumental challenge to all who try to grapple with its rich and immensely complex physical and social geography. Acclaimed British historian Jeremy Black tackles this challenge through a literal and metaphorical road trip across America’s physical and historical landscapes, analyzing the ways that events in American history and culture since 1960 have remade the geography and demographics of America.
Black works from the startling premise that the United States is a continent pretending to be a country. He examines the cultural clashes—and the tense harmony—between the numerous regional cultures uneasily contained within the United States’ wide bounds. Suburban sprawl, the triumph of consumerism, the war over health care, immigration, and Christian evangelicalism all play a part in these pages, as Black unravels the tangled web of American life during the past forty-five years. He locates such tensions in the tug-of-war between the unitary and divisive pressures that have always defined the character of American government, and in the alternating rise and fall of individualism and conformity in American society as well. Black also has some telling new reflections on America’s role abroad, from Nixon’s Vietnam to George W. Bush's Iraq.
Drawing on travels from Virginia to California to Alaska, Black deftly reveals in Altered States the less-examined aspects of American culture as they are manifested in its diverse peoples and landscapes from coast to coast.
Black works from the startling premise that the United States is a continent pretending to be a country. He examines the cultural clashes—and the tense harmony—between the numerous regional cultures uneasily contained within the United States’ wide bounds. Suburban sprawl, the triumph of consumerism, the war over health care, immigration, and Christian evangelicalism all play a part in these pages, as Black unravels the tangled web of American life during the past forty-five years. He locates such tensions in the tug-of-war between the unitary and divisive pressures that have always defined the character of American government, and in the alternating rise and fall of individualism and conformity in American society as well. Black also has some telling new reflections on America’s role abroad, from Nixon’s Vietnam to George W. Bush's Iraq.
Drawing on travels from Virginia to California to Alaska, Black deftly reveals in Altered States the less-examined aspects of American culture as they are manifested in its diverse peoples and landscapes from coast to coast.
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Thursday, June 9, 2011
Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties (Nonfictions)
Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties (Nonfictions) Review
Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties (Nonfictions) Feature
Direct Cinema is the first comprehensive study of the "direct cinema" movement of 1960s America. Through the inquisitiveness of filmmakers such as Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman-and predicated on innovations such as portable cameras and synchronized sound-direct cinema intimately documented presidential campaigns through the revelers of Woodstock and the dispossessed subjects of Wiseman's "reality fictions". This volume recovers these vastly influential yet politically underappreciated films, suggesting they represented a resurgence of America's home-grown philosophical tradition inextricably bound up in the artistic and political impulses of the 1960s.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Times Were a Changin': The Sixties Reader
The Times Were a Changin': The Sixties Reader Review
The Times Were a Changin': The Sixties Reader Feature
This is a must-have anthology of the milestone speeches, manifestos, court decisions, and groundbreaking journalism of the Sixties. No other period in American history has been more liberating, more confusing, more unforgettable, and had a more direct impact on the way we navigated the profound changes that swept over the country in the following three decades.
From Betty Friedan to Barry Goldwater, from the formidable presence of the Kennedy brothers to the unimaginable influence of Woodstock, Pulitzer prize-winning author Irwin Unger and journalist Debi Unger present the complexities of a volatile and tumultuous decade, while explaining how and why each significant event took place and how it shifted the country's consciousness.
From the antiwar movement to the moon race, from the burgeoning counterculture to the Warren and Berger courts, and from the civil rights movement to the 1968 presidential campaign, The Times Were a Changin' will tantalize and confound readers, while inspiring and enraging them as well. The Ungers provide us with a better understanding of the strategy and maneuvering of the 1960s war games--from the Bay of Pigs to the Tet Offensive. And the pieces they have chosen help us define the current of social intolerance that plagues our country to this day.
Balancing the controversial issues of the times with an even hand, the Ungers give equal time to William F. Buckley and Abbie Hoffman, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey, the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King, Jr., compiling an anthology that supplies rhyme and reason to a decade that never ceases to amaze us, endless in its capacity to be explored and understood.
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now (Viewpoints on American Culture)
Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now (Viewpoints on American Culture) Review
Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now (Viewpoints on American Culture) Feature
With remarkable speed, the Sixties have gone from lived history to mythology. They remain alive in our culture in a manner different from any previous era. At the dawn of a new century, we are still debating the issues that emerged during that decade, still living in the conscious aftermath of its events and transformations.
This collection looks back at the Sixties, attempting to understand the issues of the day on their own terms and to think about their meanings in today's world. Alexander Bloom has gathered ten original essays, each of which explores the gulf between history and myth regarding a central characteristic of the Sixties. Topics covered include civil rights, the student movement and the New Left, the Vietnam War, the antiwar movement, gay rights, the counterculture, and the women's movement.
Long Time Gone dispels myths about the Sixties and constructs an accurate vision of the past and an understanding of its impact on the modern world. It is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking deeper knowledge of this incredible decade and its continuing influence on American culture.
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