With a certain inevitability, the editors cite A Tale of Two Cities when saying of the 1960s, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Reading this varied and eclectic volume brings back often forgotten or submerged memories of the past. This is not meant, however, only for those people who lived through the 60s. Luckily, the Ungers?Irwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of history at NYU, and Debi, a journalist?have pulled together smart extracts couched in extensive contexts. For example, their look at the economy examines the influence of Michael Harringtons The Other America on JFK and on LBJs War on Poverty. Their look at Kennedy and his assassination includes both the Warren Report and Theodore Whites Life magazine article that created the myth of Camelot. The Ungers cover the politics of the New Left (with emphasis on the Free Speech Movement, the riots at Columbia University in 1968, and the Weathermen), the New Right (featuring the John Birch Society, Billy James Hargis and Barry Goldwater) and the civil rights movement (highlighting Brown v. Board of Education, Bull Connor and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). The New Feminism is analyzed in the writings of Betty Friedan, the creation of NOW and the politics of the vaginal orgasm. The Cold War gets a thorough going over, with a recap of the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which led to vast expansion of Americas role in Vietnam. This is a book that will bring back memories for aging hippies and enlighten their progeny, who missed all the excitement.
