Making Peace with the 60s

As a child of the 60's, I've read a lot of books about the period trying to pin down just what happened... Mr. Burner's book is the best one I've read about the period. His concise summaries of the civil rights and black power movements are wonderful for anyone trying to get a handle on the era. What a shame that a decade that started out so promising fell apart so quickly. I gained a lot of insight on the 60's through Mr. Burner's book.

the 1990s Continue To Be Haunted By The 1960s. In This Lively, Thought-provoking Visit To The Sixties, David Burner Helps Us Understand Why So Many Of The Idealistic Aspirations Of That Decade Were Disappointed And What We Might Do To Recover Them.--william E. Leuchtenburg, William Rand Kenan Professor, University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill

in This Lively, Thought-provoking Revisit To The Sixties, David Burner Helps Us Understand Why So Many Of The Idealistic Aspirations Of That Decade Were Disappointed And What We Might Do To Recover Them.--william Leuchtenburg

a Wise And Compelling Account Of Liberalism's Demise.... Great Fun To Read--witty, Perceptive, And Well-written.--david Oshinsky, Rutgers University

publishers Weekly

burner, A Professor Of History At Suny, Stonybrook, Offers A New Look At The Impact Of The Tumultuous '60s. Burner's Masterful Retelling Of The Civil Rights Movement Rekindles The Excitement Of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King And Others Who Risked So Much. Following This, However, The Inclusiveness Of The Movement Was Undermined By Black Separatists In Nation Of Islam And Sncc (student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The Black Power Ethos, He Says, Strives To Encrust Black Americans Into A Single Mass, And Whites Into Another. The Lasting Contribution Of The Republicans, Who Followed The Democrats Into Power, Was A Skewing Of The Traditional Work Ethic Into Don't Tax My Tax Dollars To Relieve My Neighbor's Poverty. With Clearheaded Expertise, Burner Also Pieces Together The Cultural Mosaic Of The '60s. Although His Section On John Kennedy Recycles Much Of The Now Familiar Foibles And High-minded Fortunes Of Jfk's White House, His Treatment Of Writers Gives Real Credence To The Idea Of Literature Leading To And Shaping The Era. Jack Kerouac's On The Road (a Road Map For The Sixties), Gary Synder's Zen Input Of Righting The Relationship Of Self To The World, And Other Intellectual Artifacts Helped Create A Movement Counter To Establishment Materialism. Burner Offers A Keen-sighted, Comprehensive Analysis Of A Fascinating Era That Produced The Flower Children And Richard Nixon. Readers Searching For An Admirable Explanation Of The Cross-connections In This Mythic Decade Can Find Them Here. (oct.)

David Burner's panoramic history of the 1960s conveys the ferocity of debate and the testing of visionary hopes that still require us to make sense of the decade. He begins with the civil rights and black power movements and then turns to nuanced descriptions of Kennedy and the Cold War, the counterculture and its antecedents in the Beat Generation, the student rebellion, the poverty wars, and the liberals' war in Vietnam. As he considers each topic, Burner advances a provocative argument about how liberalism self-destructed in the 1960s. In his view, the civil rights movement took a wrong turn as it gradually came to emphasize the identity politics of race and ethnicity at the expense of the vastly more important politics of class and distribution of wealth. The expansion of the Vietnam War did force radicals to confront the most terrible mistake of American liberalism, but that they also turned against the social goals of the New Deal was destructive to all concerned. Liberals seemed to rule in politics and in the media, Burner points out, yet they failed to make adequate use of their power to advance the purposes that both liberalism and the left endorsed. And forces for social amelioration splintered into pairs of enemies, such as integrationists and black separatists, the social left and mainline liberalism, and advocates of peace and supporters of a totalitarian Hanoi. Making Peace with the 60s will fascinate baby boomers and their elders, who either joined, denounced, or tried to ignore the counterculture. It will also inform a broad audience of younger people about the famous political and literary figures of the time, the salient moments, and, above all, the powerful ideas that spawned events from the civil rights era to the Vietnam War. Finally, it will help to explain why Americans failed to make full use of the energies unleashed by one of the most remarkable decades of our history. Introduction......Page 4 I. Sudden Freedom......Page 12 II. Killers Of The Dream......Page 40 III. Resolve and Restraint: The Cold War under Kennedy......Page 68 IV. The Rucksack Revolution......Page 90 V. Do Not Spindle: The Student Rebellion......Page 106 VI. The Poverty Wars......Page 132 VII. The Liberals' War in Vietnam......Page 150 Epilogue......Page 172 Bibliography......Page 178 Illustrations......Page 239 This history of America in the 1960s covers the civil rights movement, Kennedy and the Cold War, the counter-culture and Beat Generation, the student rebellion, and the Vietnam War. It argues that liberalism self-destructed by emphasizing race and ethnicity instead of class and wealth.