This book looks at daily life during a pivotal decade in American history: the 1960s. It covers the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement as well as counterculture and protest movements. The 1960s saw the assassination of a popular president; a confusing and unpopular war that claimed the lives of thousands of American combatants; the passage of a national civil rights act that mandated equal rights across all races; countless violent exchanges among Americans with polarized views on the Vietnam War and civil rights; and through it all, the rise of a counterculture movement that challenged long-established American social and cultural traditions. Daily Life in the 1960s Counterculture looks at the 1960s from the perspective of Americans who, despite their best efforts to live normal lives, could not escape the tension, conflict, and controversy that surrounded them. The war and the violence associated with protests of it came at great personal cost to many American families. This book looks those social and cultural changes, examining such topics as the sexual revolution; recreational drug culture; the roles of film, television, and music; and more.
An in depth look at the lives of women in the swinging 1960s—beyond the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. The 1960s were a progressive decade, bringing many life changing events, especially for women. Women of the 1960s explores the experiences of teenagers, young career women, and those married with young children, especially those based outside of London and far from the hedonistic influences of the day. Much of the information included in this book comes from the surprisingly honest and generous contributions of the women themselves, ensuring that a wide range of experiences are brought to life like never before. Covering topics including life after school, career choices, life after work, eating in and out, teenagers, sex, marriage, fashion, finance, women’s liberation, and travel. These stories also cover the era’s current affairs, including the Cold War and the pervasive fear of nuclear attack. Fascinating and frank, Women of the 1960s provides a new perspective on one of the most pivotal decades in modern history.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year From the National Book Award winner, a masterful history of the decade whose conflicts shattered America’s postwar order and divide us still. On July 4, 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighborhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a confident vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, social violence, and the blowback of a “silent majority” shredded the American fabric. Covering the late 1950s through the early 1970s, The Shattering focuses on the period’s fierce conflicts over race, sex, and war. The civil rights movement develops from the grassroots activism of Montgomery and the sit-ins, through the violence of Birmingham and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the frustrations of King’s Chicago campaign, a rising Black nationalism, and the Nixon-era politics of busing and the Supreme Court. The Vietnam war unfolds as Cold War policy, high-stakes politics buffeted by powerful popular movements, and searing in-country experience. Americans’ challenges to government regulation of sexuality yield landmark decisions on privacy rights, gay rights, contraception, and abortion. Kevin Boyle captures the inspiring and brutal events of this passionate time with a remarkable empathy that restores the humanity of those making this history. Often they are everyday people like Elizabeth Eckford, enduring a hostile crowd outside her newly integrated high school in Little Rock, or Estelle Griswold, welcoming her arrest for dispensing birth control information in a Connecticut town. Political leaders also emerge in revealing detail: we track Richard Nixon’s inheritances from Eisenhower and his debt to George Wallace, who forged a message of racism mixed with blue-collar grievance that Nixon imported into Republicanism. The Shattering illuminates currents that still run through our politics. It is a history for our times.
Back in the 1960s, using a Graflex Speed Graphics Press Camera, Jim "Flash" Miteff shot several hundred photographs of the Outlaws 1%er Motorcycle Club. The photographs in the book were specifically selected from his collection. These never before published images are taken directly from the original negatives that had been in storage for over 40 years.
Discusses life in the United States during the 1960s, including prosperity, baby boomers, African Americans, Vietnam, protesters, and the changing role of women.
A survey of magazine artwork from the swinging sixties. It not only gives a fascinating insight into the extraordinary artistic talents of the illustrators featured, but also reveals the social aspirations of this unprecedented era of political optimism and sexual freedom.
In this nuanced and groundbreaking history, Donna Murch argues that the Black Panther Party (BPP) started with a study group. Drawing on oral history and untapped archival sources, she explains how a relatively small city with a recent history of African
The Civil Rights Movement. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The assassination of a president and a senator. Praise turns into protest; hope into disenchantment. The 1960s was an era born in hope that ended in deep conflict. during this era, Reinhold Niebuhr, once dubbed "America's theologian," retired from Union Seminary in New York. in this book, the author introduces us to Niebuhr's life in the 1960s from his critical vantage point as Niebuhr's former student and later, colleague. Though little has been published about this decade in Niebuhr's life, the author's analysis shows a theologian whose work shifts to speak more effectively to the less religious, more secular world around him. The author introduces readers to never-before-seen letters between the author and Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr, which shed light not only on the impact Niebuhr had on the 1960s but also on the way the 1960s shaped Niebuhr.
The sixties was a decade of safari suits, shift dresses, capri pants and droopy moustaches. Of multi-purpose French onion soup, junket, tripe and Bloody Marys. Of success on the world's sporting stage and social and political stirrings at home, as Baby Boomers and their parents began to see the world differently. Award-winning and much loved actor Noeline Brown cut a groovy figure in the sixties. She confesses to us early on in "Living the 1960s" that she: 'was a bit of a snob...I preferred to listen to jazz and performance poetry, to appreciate the lyrics of Bob Dylan and to watch foreign films. I wore a lot of black and dramatic eye makeup, and frequented windowless coffee lounges where people smoked heavily and played chess'. When she caught sight of The Rolling Stones in Sydney's Hilton cocktail bar one night during their 1965 tour to Australia, she coolly noted their drink of choice, bartender Eddie Tirado's newly introduced Bourbon and Coke, before returning to sip her classic Martini, 'hoping to look cosmopolitan and sophisticated'. Noeline also found time to be a committed weekend hippy, to entertain us on the ground-breaking satirical "The Mavis Bramston Show" and to frequent Vadim's restaurant till dawn, discussing the state of the world with artists, journalists and dissenters, under the watchful gaze of ASIO operatives. With her trademark dry sense of humour and story-teller's gift, Noeline is our knowledgeable guide into the smoke-filled bars and cafes, the pastel lounge rooms and boardrooms of 1960s Australia. She explains the different social tribes: a hippy 'could live off the smell of an oily rag, and appeared to be wearing it as well'; a beatnik, according to DJ John Burls, was someone who 'had a little beard, drank wine from a goatskin and called everybody man'. Young people identified as Sharpies, Mods, Rockers and Surfies, depending on the fashions they wore and the music they listened to. She takes us along the supermarket shopping aisles, to the family dinner table: 'I found a recipe in a magazine for Greek moussaka, which featured minced lamb and potatoes, not an eggplant in sight. The list of ingredients included garlic, the use of which was 'optional'. The white sauce topping was made from yoghurt, flour and egg yolks. Many dishes called for stock cubes and even monosodium glutamate. A recipe for 'Neapolitan pizza' dough in The Australian Women's Weekly in 1968 included copha and Deb Instant Potato Flakes. But the nation was changing as young Australians woke up and switched on and our cities became more diverse. New smells of garlic and rosemary - and other herbs - wafted through suburban back lanes and people took to the streets to protest conscription and to let the government know that they were not all the way with LBJ. Containing more than 160 images, and combining entertaining social history, fact boxes and lively anecdotes, "Living the 1960s" paints a picture of a decade that didn't just swing; it twisted, stomped and screamed. For Noeline, as for a generation of Australians, it was the most important decade of her life.
