America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon by Mark Hamilton Lytle

by Mark H. Lytle

Here is a panoramic history of America from 1954 to 1973, ranging from the buoyant teen-age rebellion first captured by rock and roll, to the drawn-out and dispiriting endgame of Watergate. In America's Uncivil Wars, Mark Hamilton Lytle illuminates the great social, cultural, and political upheavals of the era. He begins his chronicle surprisingly early, in the late '50s and early '60s, when A-bomb protests and books ranging from Catcher in the Rye to Silent Spring and The Feminine Mystique challenged attitudes towards sexuality and the military-industrial complex. As baby boomers went off to college, drug use increased, women won more social freedom, and the widespread availability of birth control pills eased inhibitions against premarital sex. Lytle describes how in 1967 these isolated trends began to merge into the mainstream of American life. The counterculture spread across the nation, Black Power dominated the struggle for racial equality, and political activists mobilized vast numbers of dissidents against the war. It all came to a head in 1968, with the deepening morass of the war, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., race riots, widespread campus unrest, the violence at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the election of Richard Nixon. By then, not only did Americans divide over race, class, and gender, but also over matters as simple as the length of a boy's hair or of a girl's skirt. Only in the aftermath of Watergate did the uncivil wars finally crawl to an end, leaving in their wake a new elite that better reflected the nation's social and cultural diversity. Blending a fast-paced narration with broad cultural analysis, America's Uncivil Wars offers an invigorating portrait of the most tumultuous and exciting time in modern American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, School, 20th Century, American History, Historical, Read For School

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mark Hamilton Lytle

Lytle who was awarded a PhD from Yale University, is Professor of History and Environmental Studies and Chair of the American Studies Program at Bard College. He is also Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard. His publications include The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953 and After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (with James West Davidson) and, most recently, "An Environmental Approach to American Diplomatic History" in Diplomatic History. He is at work on the Uncivil War: America in the Vietnam Era.

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply excellent. This is a work of synthesis. As such, Hamilton does a superb job incorporating the best and latest historical scholarship into a flowing narrative.

As a side note, I saw Hamilton on CSPAN's BookTV last year giving a talk about this book. Definitely worth checking out.

[Tyler Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly thoughtful, nuanced, and digestible overview of the biggest turning point in the history of modern America. It perfectly tees up the decades to come and gives insight into the rise of conservatism and culture wars, as a reaction to the rebellion and progressivism of the 60s. The research and time put into this give a very neutral and matter of fact tone throughout, leaving the reader with the job of connecting the dots and creating their own lineage in their head while reading. History books and the time and effort they take fascinate me, and this is a perfect example of one that lets the individual years of the decade breathe and take the time they need to be explained. Every person of power has had their own legacy to look after, and the presidents of this decade, the legions of cronies that enabled them, and the populous that empowered them are all enthralling to learn about.

[Norman Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Over-all, this is not a bad summary of the "sixties", which covers 20 years in the author's analysis. I like the idea that the period is not defined by an arbitrary decade, but rather a much more sweeping view of the period after the Second World War.

The first part of the title is "America", and this book is relentlessly on the USA, which is fine; the author does not try to pretend it is about world politics. On the other hand, I think that a little international context would have been quite helpful. All of the social movements in this book seem to trace back to American roots, but is it possible that the phenomena were more broadly based? The Civil Rights Movement was definitely American, but was the "counterculture", characterized as it was by hair, clothing styles, music, and so on? Were the events of 1968 in Paris completely divorced from events in the USA, and vice versa?

Well, you won't find out from this book. So, I am complaining because it is not longer and more complicated, which is a personal choice on my part. I can live with that.

Something that really does bug me, though, is that the book was badly, badly edited. I found many examples of words spelled incorrectly ("in tact" instead of "intact", "lead" used in a number of cases where "led" should have been, names of people, and other examples), subject-verb disagreement, misplaced punctuation, and sentence fragments. The author is clearly capable of writing without these errors, but their presence suggests sloppiness. Which makes me wonder about sloppiness in his research. For that, I have deducted 1 star!

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to a hectic life style, I've been at this book for a week, which seems a long time for me. Consequently I have been reading in short bite size chunks. 'America's Uncivil Wars' has a very broad canvas. In three parts, this sociological expose of the 60's runs from 1954-63 in Part One, 1964-68 in Part Two and 1969-74 in Part Three. In short, Mark Hamilton Lytle provides a narrative that covers the Eisenhower years to the fall of Nixon.
Published in 2006, this is a well written analysis of the tumultuous decade that I grew up in. Mr Lytle is Professor of History and Director of the Historical Studies Program and Codirector of the American Studies Program at Bard College. He writes, "A person did not simply live in the sixties. The events of the decade were so tumultuous, intrusive, and overwhelming that each person had to decide at some level-whether to be on or off the bus-to use novelist Ken Kesey's metaphor for a new consciousness. That gave to those who embraced the movements of the era a sense of membership, and hence to those who did not, a sense of exclusion. By listening to Dylan, smoking dope, marching for civil rights, wearing long hair, and protesting against the war in Vietnam, anyone could claim to have joined, though what they belonged to was far from clear. Conversely, those who didn't inhale or protest or drop out were not in the club."
Being a fully paid up member of the U.K. branch of the 'club', this portrait of the American experience of this era has been very interesting reading as I only caught up with things on this side of the pond at the time of the 'Woodstock Nation', with the English version at the Isle of Weight in August '69.
My only criticism of a Professor of History is the shallow and false recital of the lone nut fairy tales that continue to mask historical truths. It was a coup d'etat Mr Lytle. Hence three stars.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to read this book for my history of the 1960's class and so far I am enjoying it.

[Amy Sjoquist · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eh. Not where I'm at.