Two perceptive histories of the recent past focus on participants more than leaders, actions more than ideologies. A Texas A & M history professor who served in Vietnam and has studied and taught in Asia, Anderson was senior adviser on the PBS documentary "Making Sense of the Sixties." His book is a national study of U.S. social activism from 1960 to 1973, focusing on how "the Movement" was experienced by participants and exploring why this activism arose when it did, how it developed, and what it accomplished. After sketching the "cold war culture" that '60s activists inherited, Anderson traces the Movement's first wave (1960-68), clarifying the steps by which rhetoric moved from integration to black power, from reform to revolution. His so-called
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In his analysis, the movement was generally leaderless and was not defined by new-left philosophy; rather, its members were motivated by the old-fashioned American pragmatism that drove protesters during other reform eras the Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, the populist and progressive era and the New Deal. Far from being a failure, as critics contend, the movement, in Anderson's estimate, cracked a rigid Cold War culture, forced campus and educational reform, sped the passage of civil rights legislation, revolutionized the status of women and influenced mainstream politics, which co-opted many of its ideas about citizen and community empowerment. Professor of history at Texas A&M University, Anderson draws heavily on interviews, underground newspapers, leaflets and participants' memoirs to create a vivid newsreel. His sweeping study is a valuable, refreshingly unbiased reassessment of the '60s …show more content…
He also demonstrates how the Sixties counterculture, once intent on changing the political and social structure, fragmented in the Seventies into groups focused on themselves. Anderson generally emphasizes the positive contributions of "the movement" freedom to live alternative lifestyles and empowerment of ethnics, women, gays, youth, and senior citizens. But he glosses over the downside of the legacy: disintegration of the family unit, fragmentation of national politics, and increased drug use. David Farber's The Sixties: From Memory to History (Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1994) has a broader scope, but Anderson's generally evenhanded study adds rich detail missing from the earlier work. [For an in-depth view of the Sixties from those who helped create the revolution, see Ron Chepesiuk's Sixties Radicals, Then and Now, reviewed on p. 85. Ed.] Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
In his analysis, the movement was generally leaderless and was not defined by new-left philosophy; rather, its members were motivated by the old-fashioned American pragmatism that drove protesters during other reform eras the Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, the populist and progressive era and the New Deal. Far from being a failure, as critics contend, the movement, in Anderson's estimate, cracked a rigid Cold War culture, forced campus and educational reform, sped the passage of civil rights legislation, revolutionized the status of women and influenced mainstream politics, which co-opted many of its ideas about citizen and community empowerment. Professor of history at Texas A&M University, Anderson draws heavily on interviews, underground newspapers, leaflets and participants' memoirs to create a vivid newsreel. His sweeping study is a valuable, refreshingly unbiased reassessment of the '60s …show more content…
He also demonstrates how the Sixties counterculture, once intent on changing the political and social structure, fragmented in the Seventies into groups focused on themselves. Anderson generally emphasizes the positive contributions of "the movement" freedom to live alternative lifestyles and empowerment of ethnics, women, gays, youth, and senior citizens. But he glosses over the downside of the legacy: disintegration of the family unit, fragmentation of national politics, and increased drug use. David Farber's The Sixties: From Memory to History (Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1994) has a broader scope, but Anderson's generally evenhanded study adds rich detail missing from the earlier work. [For an in-depth view of the Sixties from those who helped create the revolution, see Ron Chepesiuk's Sixties Radicals, Then and Now, reviewed on p. 85. Ed.] Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution