A fiction of the past : the sixties in American history

Few events during that whirlwind of movements, conflicts and upheaval known as "the sixties" took Americans more by surprise, or were more likely to inspire their rage, than the rebellion of those who were young, white, and college educated. Perhaps none have been more maligned or misunderstood since. In A Fiction of the Past , Dominick Cavallo pushes past the contemporary fog of myth, cold disdain and warm nostalgia that shrouds the radical youth culture of the '60s. He explores how the furiously chaotic sixties sprang from the comparatively placid forties and fifties. The book digs beyond the post-World War II decades and seeks the historical sources of the youth culture in the distant American past. Cavallo shows how the sixties' most radical ideas and values were deeply etched in the American soul. In A Fiction of the Past, Dominick Cavallo pushes past the contemporary fog of myth, cold disdain and warm nostalgia that shrouds the radical youth culture of the sixties. He explores how the furiously chaotic sixties sprang from the comparatively placid forties and fifties. The book also digs beyond the post-World War II decades and seeks the historical sources of the youth culture in the distant American past. What were the historical precedents of the political ideas advanced by Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student group in American history? Where does the hippie counterculture - that strange melange of sex, drugs, rock and roll and "do your own thing" individualism - fit into the broad sweep of American culture and history? This text pushes past the myths and opinions that surround the radical youth culture of the sixties. The author explores how the chaotic sixties sprang from the comparatively placid forties and fifties and how the sixties' most radical ideas and values were deeply etched in the American soul. A myth-dispelling chronicle of the student unrest and youth culture of the 1960s places these events in a firm historical perspective showing the movement's steady growth out of a long-standing radical tradition. THE INCLINATION OF AMERICANS TO EXPECT AND ACCEPT CHANGE is perhaps their most commonly shared national trait.