The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade
De Groot, a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews (The Bomb: A Life), argues that our conventional view of the '60s as a time of ripe and productive counterculturalism and social revolution is a sham. He further argues that contemporary nostalgia for the hopefulness (which proved futile) and idealism (which proved fraudulent) of that turbulent decade led to virtually no positive advances. In DeGroot's view, not much was achieved for civil rights, women's liberation and environmental awareness, not to mention advances and great work in the visual, film and musical arts. The commonly accepted history of the decade, DeGroot insists, is a collection of beliefs zealously guarded by those keen to protect something sacred. In the end, DeGroot envisions the '60s as a trivial period of self-indulgence on the part of the West and a bitterly tragic 10 years as they played out in other theaters (especially the Middle East and Southeast Asia). DeGroot deconstructs virtually all key icons of the era—Woodstock (a festival, yes; a nation, no), the Beatles, Dylan, student radicals, Haight-Ashbury, the sexual revolution and even Muhammad Ali—finding that their legends loom far larger than their realities. One might disagree, but DeGroot's book comprises a fascinating revisionist polemic.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.