Making Peace with the '60s

By Sandra Burner and David Burner

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 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1881089215
• ISBN13: 9781881089216
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Brandywine Press
• Length: 304 Pages

Customer Reviews

Great one-volume overview of a turbulent decade.

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.