Seeds of the Sixties by Andrew Jamison

by Ron Eyerman

"The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have become an enduring part of American cultural & political history. Where did 60s radicalism come from? Who planted the intellectual seeds that brought it into being? These questions are answered in this book. The result is a combination of history & biography that vividly portrays an entire culture in transition. The authors focus on specific individuals, each of whom distinctively carried the ideas of the '30s into the decades after WWII, each of whom shared in inventing a new kind of intellectual partisanship. They begin with C. Wright Mills, Hannah Arendt & Erich Fromm & show how their work linked the "old left" of the 30s to the "new left" of the 60s. Lewis Mumford, Rachel Carson & Fairfield Osborn laid the groundwork for environmental activism. Herbert Marcuse, Margaret Mead & Leo Szilard articulated opposition to the postwar "scientific-technological state." Alternatives to mass culture were proposed by Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin & Mary McCarthy. Saul Alinsky, Dorothy Day & Martin Luther King Jr made politics personal. This is an unusual book, written with an intimacy that brings to life both intellect & emotion. The portraits featured demonstrate that the transforming radicalism of the 60s grew from the legacy of an earlier generation of thinkers. With a deep awareness of the historical trends in American culture, the authors show the continuing relevance of these partisan intellectuals.

Genres: Sociology

Hardcover

First published January 30, 1994