It began in 1960 with the Greensboro sit-ins. By 1973, when a few Native Americans rebelled at Wounded Knee and the U.S. Army came home from Vietnam, it was over. In between came Freedom Rides, Port Huron, the Mississippi Summer, Berkeley, Selma, Vietnam, the Summer of Love, Black Power, the Chicago Convention, hippies, Brown Power, and Women's Liberation--The Movement--in an era that became known as The Sixties. Why did millions of Americans become activists; why did they take to the streets?
These are questions Terry Anderson explores in The Movement and The Sixties, a searching history of the social activism that defined a generation of young Americans and that called into question the very nature of "America." Drawing on interviews, "underground" manuscripts collected at campuses and archives throughout the nation, and many popular accounts, Anderson begins with Greensboro and reveals how one event built upon another and exploded into the kaleidoscope of activism by the early 1970s. Civil rights, student power, and the crusade against the Vietnam War composed the first wave of the movement, and during and after the rip tides of 1968, the movement changed and expanded, flowing into new currents of counterculture, minority empowerment, and women's liberation. The parades of protesters, along with schocking events--from the Kennedy assassination to My Lai--encouraged other citizens to question their nation. Was America racist, imperialist, sexist?
Unlike other books on this tumultuous decade, The Movement and The Sixties is neither a personal memoir, nor a treatise on New Left ideology, nor a chronicle of the so-called leaders of the movement. Instead, it is a national history, a compelling and fascinating account of a defining era that remains a significant part of our lives today.
Industry Reviews
"Should be the standard for years to come."--Kirkus Reviews
"A marvelous tour de force."--Mary King, author of Freedom Song
"Anderson has done the nearly impossible, giving us historical and intellectual synthesis."--The Seattle Times
"Eminently readable, fine presentation of its announced subject, 'the Movement.'"--J.M. Bordelon, Houston Baptist University
"This is a nice, balanced presentation of a confusion of often contradictory movements which characterized the decade of the 1960s. In any consideration of a time period it is always difficult to measure individual movements as a part of that time. Anderson does an excellent job in this regard, stressing not only movements, but interrelationships. The bibliography is most useful. All in all, this book should find wide readership and classroom use."--Gerald
Schnabel, Bemidji State University
"Excellent synthesis of a very complex two decades. Anderson covers all dimensions of this rapidly shifting series of forces and counter-forces in a fair and vivid manner."--Dan O'Bryan, Sierra Nevada College
"Very exciting, fast-paced, well-written, broadly cast text. I believe this text will interest and keep the attention of readers who perhaps were not yet born during its time frame."--Robin Lorentzen, Albertson College
"Best book yet on the subject."--James Ryan, Texas A&M University at Galveston
"To study the Sixties, this is the place to begin. Anderson has created square 1."--James Hijiya, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth
"Anderson has written a sympathetic, broadly descriptive 'movement' history."--The Journal of American History
"A lively account of the turbulence experienced by American society after two decades of Cold War....The Movement and the Sixties is a welcome addition to the literature of the period. Written with both passion and control."--The Historian
"Terry Anderson has written the best book yet on the broad protest movement that dominated American life in the 1960s. Unlike earlier writers, who focus on elites or just one group, he offers a kaleidoscopic view that stresses the grass-roots involvement of American youth as they challenged both the politics and the values of their elders in a frontal assault on the established Cold War culture. It is a tour de force."--Robert A. Divine, George W. Littlefield
Professor in American History, University of Texas at Austin
"A splendid study, exhaustively researched and engagingly written, and a useful--indeed essential--corrective to the new conventional wisdom about a tumultuous era."--George C. Herring, University of Kentucky
"A marvelous tour de force....Anderson's book is an indispensable tool for anyone trying to understand the perplexing range of movements during the 1960s. It should be on the bookshelf of every serious student of social activism."--Mary King, author of Freedom Song
"A disturbing tale, well told in exhaustive detail....It is the merit of Terry Anderson's book that it captures the tone, as well as the events, of a decade in which America finally emerged from cold-war simplicities and began the painful discovery of itself."--The Economist
"Hundreds of voices resound in this thoroughgoing analysis of '60s radicalism....A highly accessible survey that should be the standard for years to come."--Kirkus Reviews
"A valuable, refreshingly unbiased reassessment of the '60s legacy."--Publishers Weekly
"Anderson's well-written, accessible history is much more than nostalgic reading for baby boomers, the great majority of whom sat on the sidelines during most of the decade while a minority acted. Neither is it a polemic in unquestioning defense of '60s activists. Instead, it attempts to understand the motives of 'the movement' and place its actions in the context of the times. In doing so, it provides a valuable counterpoint to the reductionist and revisionist
views now prevalent."--The Christian Science Monitor
"For those already tested in the political fires of the '60s, [Anderson's] book is a reminder to keep alert and stay active. For a younger generation, he provides a concise and closely packed history that precedes the roil and boil of today's political activity."--The Seattle Times
"Perceptive....Anderson takes on all strands of the Movement."--Booklist (starred review)
"Ably surveys a busy, complex era....This is a resonant book. Most of all, it recalls a not-so-distant past when Americans thought we could and should reform our society."--The Dallas Morning News
"A fascinating, extensively researched account of a time when the younger generation opened pop culture's Pandora's box, and an estranged segment of America took to the streets and said: 'We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.'...Dig it, man. It's a trip."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"Anderson leaves no lunch counter unturned. It is all there, from Rosa Parks and the Summer of Love to bra burnings and the March on the Pentagon, complete with selected quotations from various songs of the era atop each chapter."--William McGurn, writing in The Wall Street Journal
"[Anderson] has written a concise, thorough and thoughtful history of the social and political movements that began with the end of World War II and concluded with our nation's withdrawal from Vietnam."--Houston Chronicle
"[The book] is a testament to the fervor and spirit of a time that we still use as a yardstick of our national personality."--Orlando Sentinel
"Contributes to previous scholarship a new breadth of coverage, bringing into focus the enormous expanse of activism (in terms of geography as well as constituencies, issues, strategies, and tactics)....Offers an evocative portrait of opposition to the Vietnam War among veterans and soldiers."--American Historical Review
