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Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and FoundIts Soul
The electrifying story of the turbulent year when the sixties ended and America teetered on the edge of revolution
As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed nine thousand protests and eighty-four acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching fifty thousand, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society. Witness to the Revolution, Clara Bingham’s unique oral history of that tumultuous time, unveils anew that moment when America careened to the brink of a civil war at home, as it fought a long, futile war abroad.
Woven together from one hundred original interviews, Witness to the Revolution provides a firsthand narrative of that period of upheaval in the words of those closest to the action—the activists, organizers, radicals, and resisters who manned the barricades of what Students for a Democratic Society leader Tom Hayden called “the Great Refusal.”
We meet Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground; Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department employee who released the Pentagon Papers; feminist theorist Robin Morgan; actor and activist Jane Fonda; and many others whose powerful personal stories capture the essence of an era. We witness how the killing of four students at Kent State turned a straitlaced social worker into a hippie, how the civil rights movement gave birth to the women’s movement, and how opposition to the war in Vietnam turned college students into prisoners, veterans into peace marchers, and intellectuals into bombers.
With lessons that can be applied to our time, Witness to the Revolution is more than just a record of the death throes of the Age of Aquarius. Today, when America is once again enmeshed in racial turmoil, extended wars overseas, and distrust of the government, the insights contained in this book are more relevant than ever.
Advance praise for Witness to the Revolution
“Vivid, compelling, and addictively readable, Bingham has captured the lightning of the 1960s in a jar, where it blows the reader’s socks off. Whether you lived through this period or want to know what you missed, this is a popular history everyone should read.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“For those who ‘missed the sixties’ (like most of us, whether demographically or spiritually), this vital book goes a long way toward explaining the original wound that festers in our ‘culture wars’ still.”—Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home
“A compelling history and an authentic testimony of a turbulent time. Living in a moment of new political turmoil, it’s critical that we revisit an era when arguments over politics and culture were palpable, urgent, and revolutionary. Clara Bingham takes us there.”—Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life
“Moving, funny, horrifying, clarifying . . . the best sixties book since Edie.”—Evan Thomas, author of Being Nixon
“Takes you to the exact spot where the wave of the sixties, the Movement, and the Age of Aquarius crested. You can almost smell the tear gas.
As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed nine thousand protests and eighty-four acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching fifty thousand, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society. Witness to the Revolution, Clara Bingham’s unique oral history of that tumultuous time, unveils anew that moment when America careened to the brink of a civil war at home, as it fought a long, futile war abroad.
Woven together from one hundred original interviews, Witness to the Revolution provides a firsthand narrative of that period of upheaval in the words of those closest to the action—the activists, organizers, radicals, and resisters who manned the barricades of what Students for a Democratic Society leader Tom Hayden called “the Great Refusal.”
We meet Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground; Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department employee who released the Pentagon Papers; feminist theorist Robin Morgan; actor and activist Jane Fonda; and many others whose powerful personal stories capture the essence of an era. We witness how the killing of four students at Kent State turned a straitlaced social worker into a hippie, how the civil rights movement gave birth to the women’s movement, and how opposition to the war in Vietnam turned college students into prisoners, veterans into peace marchers, and intellectuals into bombers.
With lessons that can be applied to our time, Witness to the Revolution is more than just a record of the death throes of the Age of Aquarius. Today, when America is once again enmeshed in racial turmoil, extended wars overseas, and distrust of the government, the insights contained in this book are more relevant than ever.
Advance praise for Witness to the Revolution
“Vivid, compelling, and addictively readable, Bingham has captured the lightning of the 1960s in a jar, where it blows the reader’s socks off. Whether you lived through this period or want to know what you missed, this is a popular history everyone should read.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“For those who ‘missed the sixties’ (like most of us, whether demographically or spiritually), this vital book goes a long way toward explaining the original wound that festers in our ‘culture wars’ still.”—Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home
“A compelling history and an authentic testimony of a turbulent time. Living in a moment of new political turmoil, it’s critical that we revisit an era when arguments over politics and culture were palpable, urgent, and revolutionary. Clara Bingham takes us there.”—Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life
“Moving, funny, horrifying, clarifying . . . the best sixties book since Edie.”—Evan Thomas, author of Being Nixon
“Takes you to the exact spot where the wave of the sixties, the Movement, and the Age of Aquarius crested. You can almost smell the tear gas.
582 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 31, 2016
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1869 people want to read
About the author
Clara Bingham
5 books42 followersBingham was born in 1963 into a newspaper family in Louisville, Kentucky. She moved to New York City in 1968. She graduated from Harvard University in 1985 with a degree in History and Literature. At Harvard, she served as co-news editor of the Harvard Independent.
Bingham has written three books: 'Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul' (2016), 'Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law' (co-written with Laura Leedy Gansler 2002), which was adapted into the 2005 feature film, 'North Country'. 'Class Action' was a 2002 Los Angeles Times best book of the year and won the AAUW Speaking Out For Justice Award in 2007.
Bingham's first book was omen on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress' (1997).
As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek magazine from 1989 to 1993, Bingham covered the George H. W. Bush administration leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. Her writing has appeared widely in publications including, The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, Ms., Vogue, Talk Magazine, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, The Washington Monthly. She also worked as a stringer for United Press International in Papua New Guinea.
Bingham also worked as a press secretary for the 1988 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.
Bingham wrote an exposé about the Air Force Academy rape scandal for Vanity Fair in 2003, which earned her the 2004 Exceptional Merit in Media Award (EMMA) given by the National Women's Political Caucus. The article was anthologized in the 2004 edition of Best American Crime Writing. In January 2016, Investigation Discovery's Vanity Fair Confidential series featured Bingham in its one-hour program about the rape scandal.
While reporting a story in West Virginia, Bingham, a Kentucky native, witnessed the destructive effects of mountaintop removal coal mining for the first time. Afterwards, she spent several years producing The Last Mountain (directed by Bill Haney), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011, screened in theaters in over 60 American cities, and won the International Documentary Association's Pare Lorentz Award
Bingham has written three books: 'Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul' (2016), 'Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law' (co-written with Laura Leedy Gansler 2002), which was adapted into the 2005 feature film, 'North Country'. 'Class Action' was a 2002 Los Angeles Times best book of the year and won the AAUW Speaking Out For Justice Award in 2007.
Bingham's first book was omen on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress' (1997).
As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek magazine from 1989 to 1993, Bingham covered the George H. W. Bush administration leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. Her writing has appeared widely in publications including, The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, Ms., Vogue, Talk Magazine, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, The Washington Monthly. She also worked as a stringer for United Press International in Papua New Guinea.
Bingham also worked as a press secretary for the 1988 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.
Bingham wrote an exposé about the Air Force Academy rape scandal for Vanity Fair in 2003, which earned her the 2004 Exceptional Merit in Media Award (EMMA) given by the National Women's Political Caucus. The article was anthologized in the 2004 edition of Best American Crime Writing. In January 2016, Investigation Discovery's Vanity Fair Confidential series featured Bingham in its one-hour program about the rape scandal.
While reporting a story in West Virginia, Bingham, a Kentucky native, witnessed the destructive effects of mountaintop removal coal mining for the first time. Afterwards, she spent several years producing The Last Mountain (directed by Bill Haney), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011, screened in theaters in over 60 American cities, and won the International Documentary Association's Pare Lorentz Award
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
April 1, 2016
It’s a strange feeling when your formative years are suddenly treated as part of History with a capital H. But it makes sense for Clara Bingham to collect oral histories of the tumultuous 1969/1970 when so much happened, including Woodstock, Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers, the shootings at Kent State University, the fatal bombing of a campus building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the My Lai massacre.. Reading this brought so many memories flooding back.
In the Vietnam war era, people watched the nightly news, usually with either Walter Cronkite on CBS or Huntley and Brinkley on NBC. Everyone was getting the same news, and the lead story just about every single night was the war. And although the civil rights movement was a source of plenty of political action, it was the Vietnam war, and the draft, that galvanized political rebellion across the country. The antiwar rebellion was related to many other movements, like feminism, earth consciousness, marijuana/LSD promotion, rock music.
Since these are recollections (with succinct commentaries and historical notes by Bingham), you will read different perspectives of the same events. A story from a demonstrator at the 1968 Democratic party convention in Chicago is followed by one from an FBI agent. Stories of activists who went underground are accompanied by recollections of those whose job it was to try to track them down. Recollections of the New York trial of the Black Panther 21 come from one of the defense lawyers and from the presiding judge’s son, who was just nine years old during the trial, but vividly remembers the firebombing of his family’s home and the rigid security measures his family lived under for the remaining months of the trial. Many of the recollections are self-justifying, but quite a few of the interviewees also express regret and a changed perspective.
There are famous names in this volume, like Jane Fonda, Oliver Stone, Joan Baez and Carl Bernstein, but many other less well-known figures who, in many cases, were even closer to the big events of the time, including student journalists at Kent State and Wisconsin, Kent State shooting victims, soldiers who served in Vietnam, veterans of numerous action groups, including several members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, musicians who played at Woodstock, government insiders, members of the FBI and local law enforcement. The cast of characters is huge, and you will get to know them as you go through the book, but there is also a helpful set of “Voices” endnotes with thumbnail biographies of each of them.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the story of how the SDS became the Weather Underground and moved so far into doctrinaire extremism that it forgot that a revolution needs to make a case to the people to succeed. Just as mainstream America was beginning to see real problems with the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s, some political actors moved into extremist theater and violence that pushed many Americans away. Bingham and some of the Voices suggest that an opportunity may have been lost to end the war much earlier. I used to watch the news with my WW2 veteran father, and he could see that something was very wrong about the way things worked in Vietnam, that it wasn’t his kind of war at all, but the style of young antiwar activists was offensive to most of his generation and made it difficult for them to speak openly in opposition to the war.
I’m impressed by Clara Bingham’s ability to organize these oral histories both chronologically and thematically. The use of these first-person recollections animates the history, but Bingham’s organization keeps the narrative moving and gives it coherence. It is only toward the very end that it loses focus a little.
Though this is a long book, it’s so immersive that I was always eager to return to it. It compares favorably to a recent book with a similar subject, Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage. Burrough’s presentation is disjointed and he goes into such excruciating detail that he drains the life out of the story. Bingham does a much better job of stitching the disparate stories into a cohesive narrative and conveying a lot of information without getting bogged down in detail.
In the Vietnam war era, people watched the nightly news, usually with either Walter Cronkite on CBS or Huntley and Brinkley on NBC. Everyone was getting the same news, and the lead story just about every single night was the war. And although the civil rights movement was a source of plenty of political action, it was the Vietnam war, and the draft, that galvanized political rebellion across the country. The antiwar rebellion was related to many other movements, like feminism, earth consciousness, marijuana/LSD promotion, rock music.
Since these are recollections (with succinct commentaries and historical notes by Bingham), you will read different perspectives of the same events. A story from a demonstrator at the 1968 Democratic party convention in Chicago is followed by one from an FBI agent. Stories of activists who went underground are accompanied by recollections of those whose job it was to try to track them down. Recollections of the New York trial of the Black Panther 21 come from one of the defense lawyers and from the presiding judge’s son, who was just nine years old during the trial, but vividly remembers the firebombing of his family’s home and the rigid security measures his family lived under for the remaining months of the trial. Many of the recollections are self-justifying, but quite a few of the interviewees also express regret and a changed perspective.
There are famous names in this volume, like Jane Fonda, Oliver Stone, Joan Baez and Carl Bernstein, but many other less well-known figures who, in many cases, were even closer to the big events of the time, including student journalists at Kent State and Wisconsin, Kent State shooting victims, soldiers who served in Vietnam, veterans of numerous action groups, including several members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, musicians who played at Woodstock, government insiders, members of the FBI and local law enforcement. The cast of characters is huge, and you will get to know them as you go through the book, but there is also a helpful set of “Voices” endnotes with thumbnail biographies of each of them.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the story of how the SDS became the Weather Underground and moved so far into doctrinaire extremism that it forgot that a revolution needs to make a case to the people to succeed. Just as mainstream America was beginning to see real problems with the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s, some political actors moved into extremist theater and violence that pushed many Americans away. Bingham and some of the Voices suggest that an opportunity may have been lost to end the war much earlier. I used to watch the news with my WW2 veteran father, and he could see that something was very wrong about the way things worked in Vietnam, that it wasn’t his kind of war at all, but the style of young antiwar activists was offensive to most of his generation and made it difficult for them to speak openly in opposition to the war.
I’m impressed by Clara Bingham’s ability to organize these oral histories both chronologically and thematically. The use of these first-person recollections animates the history, but Bingham’s organization keeps the narrative moving and gives it coherence. It is only toward the very end that it loses focus a little.
Though this is a long book, it’s so immersive that I was always eager to return to it. It compares favorably to a recent book with a similar subject, Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage. Burrough’s presentation is disjointed and he goes into such excruciating detail that he drains the life out of the story. Bingham does a much better job of stitching the disparate stories into a cohesive narrative and conveying a lot of information without getting bogged down in detail.
September 5, 2016
Truly one of the most interesting books I have ever read. An oral history of the changes wrought by the Vietnam War and its attendant cultural revolution. All the main players and events are covered. Take a trip back to a time when our country was on the brink of becoming something greater.
While the Nixon government had run amok, the people sought to right the country's course and move it toward a more just and open society. We've got the anti-war hippies to thank for the women's movement, an advancement in civil rights and voter participation, a more astute ecological awareness, and increased rights for the the gay community, among other things.
While the Nixon government had run amok, the people sought to right the country's course and move it toward a more just and open society. We've got the anti-war hippies to thank for the women's movement, an advancement in civil rights and voter participation, a more astute ecological awareness, and increased rights for the the gay community, among other things.
January 6, 2018
This is a nonfiction oral history of the years of 1969 and 1970; most of the voices being from radicals, resisters, vets, hippies, and an occasional FBI agent. It's a superb history of a time period that is often confusing yet equally fascinating and even inspiring to me.
I was in my senior year of high school in 1969 and began my freshman year at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1970. My beloved brother was serving in Viet Nam during that same time. I was terrified of doing anything that could ultimately endanger my brother, but at the same time I was becoming quite aware that the Viet Nam War was wrong. This book was challenging for me to read because of the emotions it stirred within me. I would often set it aside and ponder what I had been reading.
The voices from that time period and narration by Clara Bingham helped me see the big picture of all the protest movements and their values and aims. I learned so much about this time in which I was becoming an adult, a time that defined my view of the world, my government, and my personal values. At times, I was astounded (particularly the chapters on the Weather Underground), often saddened (My Lai Massacre and the Kent State shootings. It's still gnawing at me.), and frequently furious at the unlawful acts of J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon.
Here are just some of the voices you will hear if you read this great oral history:
Daniel Ellsberg - antiwar activist who stole classified documents to show that the war was unwinnable. He could have faced 115 years in prison, but the criminal misconduct on the part of members Nixon's White House caused a mistrial.
Joe Filo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a photo he took at Kent State seconds after 20-year old Jeffrey Miller had been shot dead by the National Guard.
Bill Dyson, Jr. - FBI special agent who doggedly investigated the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weathermen.
Bernadine Dohrn - Leader of the radical Weathermen group and was on the Most Wanted FBI fugitive list from 1970 to 1980. She did not serve any jail time because of the criminal misconduct of the government (all evidence was fruit of the poisoned tree).
Robin Morgan - founder of contemporary feminism
Stephen Stills - member of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, composer of "For What It's Worth"
Carl Bernstein - investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of "All the President's Men" (co-authored with Bob Woodward)
Peter Coyote - actor and founder of a communal hippie group called the Diggers in California.
Jane Fonda - Oscar winning actress and antiwar activist
If you are interested in this period, I highly recommend this book. You will not like all of the voices in the book (I sure didn't), but it is illuminating as to their philosophies and goals. I find it quite intriguing how close the USA was to an actual civil war in 1970, and find comparisons with what is happening today in our country.
I was in my senior year of high school in 1969 and began my freshman year at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1970. My beloved brother was serving in Viet Nam during that same time. I was terrified of doing anything that could ultimately endanger my brother, but at the same time I was becoming quite aware that the Viet Nam War was wrong. This book was challenging for me to read because of the emotions it stirred within me. I would often set it aside and ponder what I had been reading.
The voices from that time period and narration by Clara Bingham helped me see the big picture of all the protest movements and their values and aims. I learned so much about this time in which I was becoming an adult, a time that defined my view of the world, my government, and my personal values. At times, I was astounded (particularly the chapters on the Weather Underground), often saddened (My Lai Massacre and the Kent State shootings. It's still gnawing at me.), and frequently furious at the unlawful acts of J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon.
Here are just some of the voices you will hear if you read this great oral history:
Daniel Ellsberg - antiwar activist who stole classified documents to show that the war was unwinnable. He could have faced 115 years in prison, but the criminal misconduct on the part of members Nixon's White House caused a mistrial.
Joe Filo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a photo he took at Kent State seconds after 20-year old Jeffrey Miller had been shot dead by the National Guard.
Bill Dyson, Jr. - FBI special agent who doggedly investigated the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weathermen.
Bernadine Dohrn - Leader of the radical Weathermen group and was on the Most Wanted FBI fugitive list from 1970 to 1980. She did not serve any jail time because of the criminal misconduct of the government (all evidence was fruit of the poisoned tree).
Robin Morgan - founder of contemporary feminism
Stephen Stills - member of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, composer of "For What It's Worth"
Carl Bernstein - investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of "All the President's Men" (co-authored with Bob Woodward)
Peter Coyote - actor and founder of a communal hippie group called the Diggers in California.
Jane Fonda - Oscar winning actress and antiwar activist
If you are interested in this period, I highly recommend this book. You will not like all of the voices in the book (I sure didn't), but it is illuminating as to their philosophies and goals. I find it quite intriguing how close the USA was to an actual civil war in 1970, and find comparisons with what is happening today in our country.
May 18, 2024
I was meant to be alive in the 60’s. I wish our society was still being radicalized. This is very similar to Days of Rage. It doesn’t portray the left as all that good or smart in hindsight, but I still think it’s a good read. Good feminist perspective. Oh man the chapter on Kent state is just brutal. 4.2 stars
September 14, 2016
This is my favorite book (so far) of 2016!
The author takes an in-depth look at the school year of August 1969 to August 1970 and addresses almost every milestone that happened in that time frame - and there were quite a few (draft resisting, the formation of the Weathermen, Nixon trying to take down any and all perceived threats to his power, the release of the Pentagon Papers, Kent State, Woodstock, breaking the My Lai massacre in the news, women's lib, the Black Panther Party, etc, etc). And she doesn't write it down like a textbook; instead, the major players who were willing to talk about what they saw, experienced, did, and thought tell the tales. The result is an incredibly engrossing read, and I am so sad that it is now over, although the author provides an extensive "further reading" category with well over a hundred books, and I want to read at least half of them.
The 60s were such a fascinating time frame for me and how society changed so dramatically, and even though a lot of people seem to think that it was a bunch of hippies who smoked dope and listened to trippy music, there is so much that happened during this time frame that still affects us to this day. And the book doesn't shy away from the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Reading this book was an eye-opener for me, showing just how disconnected I feel from the political process. It is amazing to me to see so many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who saw what they knew to be wrong and did what they could to change it. And now, today, we have such an amazing network available to us to organize (the internet), and we don't use it. It just blows my mind. And so many people think that Edward Snowden is an enemy. Also blows my mind. Listen to some of the songs from the era (Steppenwolf's "Monster" is a great place to start and is mentioned in this book) and they apply so, so much to modern day problems too.
Highly recommended.
The author takes an in-depth look at the school year of August 1969 to August 1970 and addresses almost every milestone that happened in that time frame - and there were quite a few (draft resisting, the formation of the Weathermen, Nixon trying to take down any and all perceived threats to his power, the release of the Pentagon Papers, Kent State, Woodstock, breaking the My Lai massacre in the news, women's lib, the Black Panther Party, etc, etc). And she doesn't write it down like a textbook; instead, the major players who were willing to talk about what they saw, experienced, did, and thought tell the tales. The result is an incredibly engrossing read, and I am so sad that it is now over, although the author provides an extensive "further reading" category with well over a hundred books, and I want to read at least half of them.
The 60s were such a fascinating time frame for me and how society changed so dramatically, and even though a lot of people seem to think that it was a bunch of hippies who smoked dope and listened to trippy music, there is so much that happened during this time frame that still affects us to this day. And the book doesn't shy away from the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Reading this book was an eye-opener for me, showing just how disconnected I feel from the political process. It is amazing to me to see so many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who saw what they knew to be wrong and did what they could to change it. And now, today, we have such an amazing network available to us to organize (the internet), and we don't use it. It just blows my mind. And so many people think that Edward Snowden is an enemy. Also blows my mind. Listen to some of the songs from the era (Steppenwolf's "Monster" is a great place to start and is mentioned in this book) and they apply so, so much to modern day problems too.
Highly recommended.
May 5, 2023
This book is a collection of first-person accounts of the period August 1969-August 1970. A range of voices are included - from draft resisters and activists to FBI agents - and it's remarkable how much occurred during this time frame - leak of the Pentagon Papers, the Kent State Shooting, Woodstock. I learned a lot from this book and I appreciated hearing the different perspectives on this momentous time. If you're interested in the history of the 1960s and 70s, this book is highly recommended.
February 19, 2021
This one was not exactly what I was expecting. I’d say, if I could, I’d give it 3 ½ stars.
It was one of those times in history when the world changed and nothing would be the same afterward. Of course, if you really think about it that’s kind of always true. Things are always changing. Still, that time felt special. I was there seeing it all through the eyes of a little kid. Thoughtful grown-ups told me that hippies would gladly kidnap me, butcher me, and eat me. People can be so nice to kids. I didn’t exactly understand what was happening, but I knew something was. The music alone made a deep impression on me.
One of the things I found interesting was the similarities between that time and today. It particularly struck me that the parents of one of the students murdered by the National Guard at Kent State spoke of getting letters accusing them of faking the whole thing, claiming that the entire incident was a hoax. Sound familiar?
This is an unusual way to tell history, through the eyes of the people who lived it is told mostly with quotes. I guess that's what they mean by oral history. I'm more used to that kind of raw material being woven into a narrative. I’m not really sure how I feel about that as it was a little choppy at times, but I think it’s a valuable record. There are parts of this that I’m going to remember for a long time. I wonder, though, if I hadn’t already been somewhat familiar with that time period, would I have so easily been able to follow what was going on?
This one was worth my time.
It was one of those times in history when the world changed and nothing would be the same afterward. Of course, if you really think about it that’s kind of always true. Things are always changing. Still, that time felt special. I was there seeing it all through the eyes of a little kid. Thoughtful grown-ups told me that hippies would gladly kidnap me, butcher me, and eat me. People can be so nice to kids. I didn’t exactly understand what was happening, but I knew something was. The music alone made a deep impression on me.
One of the things I found interesting was the similarities between that time and today. It particularly struck me that the parents of one of the students murdered by the National Guard at Kent State spoke of getting letters accusing them of faking the whole thing, claiming that the entire incident was a hoax. Sound familiar?
This is an unusual way to tell history, through the eyes of the people who lived it is told mostly with quotes. I guess that's what they mean by oral history. I'm more used to that kind of raw material being woven into a narrative. I’m not really sure how I feel about that as it was a little choppy at times, but I think it’s a valuable record. There are parts of this that I’m going to remember for a long time. I wonder, though, if I hadn’t already been somewhat familiar with that time period, would I have so easily been able to follow what was going on?
This one was worth my time.
August 12, 2022
I think that I tried to read a Studs Terkel book in high school and couldn't really get into it. After that, I filed away that I didn't like oral histories. This book really changed my mind. The intro is helpful, and the very brief chapter intros allow the author just enough connective tissue to keep things moving. It felt long, and I felt that the final chapter was a little underwhelming, but this is essential reading for any understanding of the 60s. Familiar stories made new, and details that I can't believe I didn't already know.
February 22, 2017
Time managing editor Henry Grunwald wrote in 1970 after touring the country, "The radicals--always excepting the most violent fringe--insist that America must be great. That is why, within reason, we must cherish them."
-
I was very excited to read this oral history of one year in US history: 1969-1970. It's an oral history, so you're hearing these stories directly from primary sources. And I learned a TON:
the draft, LSD, campus protests, The Weathermen, Vietnam, Nixon, Woodstock, Drug Laws, Court Cases, Wire Taps, Kent State, Pentagon Paper/Ellsberg, Days of Rage riots, Vietnam Moratorium demonstrations, My Lai/Hersh war crimes + investigative war reporting, domestic terrorism, FBI surveillance, Greenwich townhouse explosion, women's liberation, Black Panthers, Cambodia, and the list goes on and on.
Oral Histories are difficult to structure and sustain over an entire book. The ones that work rely on several deep sources connected by one strong sustaining story, like the CAA or ESPN or SNL books. Where this book runs into structural turbulence is in trying to fit a semester's amount of 1969/70 history with over a hundred diverse and balanced sources into chapters built around a theme but also progressing in chronological order.
So you'd have a whole chapter on The Weathermen where a lot of time and material is covered and then leave those characters hanging for a few hundred pages of campus unrest, government cover up, draft dodging, Vietnam corruption, women's lib, and then get another chapter of The Weathermen. Therefore it's a bit schizophrenic in style to read straightforwardly and keep ordered in your mind.
You run into some slow spots where it feels like homework and then in other sections you're speeding through a developing story only to then jump into something completely different when the chapter ends.
Structural and thematic issues aside, this is clearly an important book and one very much of this time. While I had studied the end of the sixties (as it related to Hunter S Thompson's life and writing, for my college thesis), MUCH of this was all new information to me - that just four decades ago there were 50 politically related bombings a day in the US and regular violent protests in the streets.
Knowing the history of protest and progress is our country is more important than ever to appreciate how far we've come (not just in Black history and Women's rights) in learning to protest peacefully and learn civil disobedience - on both sides, where the cops and government almost look restrained today (and we still have a long way to go).
If you want to cry during the first person retellings of the Kent State student senseless murders (and the first of dangerous Fake News where the government was claiming the students fired first instead of being a football field length away protesting peacefully) or try to understand the shock and horror of millions of civilian casualties at the undiscerning war in Vietnam, read this book. If you want to understand that the government used to lie to the media and citizens on a regular basis without accountability, that Hoover ran the FBI like a mafia for four administrations, and the real consequences on culture/education/family/politics of a mandatory draft that politicized millions of those affected and made people flee the country, go underground, go AWOL, become fugitives, or leak the Pentagon Papers - I mean, SHIT WAS INSANE NOT THAT LONG AGO.
And so this book, forgiven for it's flaws, deserves our attention. I'm glad I read it. This is recent history we cannot forget and we're lucky to have these stories live on in this book for future generations. I would sign up for that 1969/70 college course, because we have still so much to learn and remember and apply to today's RESISTANCE.
It's an eventful as hell year full of empathy, regret, hurt, love, wonderment, shock, awe, surprise, hate, fear, power, and powerlessness. And it all really happened. So let's learn from it.
-
"the media does not recognize organizing. It recognizes events. So just having a demonstration is not enough--if you had a demonstration, then you had to have another demonstration, it's not enough to really get the coverage. So you have to up the ante."
-
Former president Bill Clinton describes this divide: "If you look back on the sixties and, on balance, you think there was more good than harm, then you're probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."
-
I was very excited to read this oral history of one year in US history: 1969-1970. It's an oral history, so you're hearing these stories directly from primary sources. And I learned a TON:
the draft, LSD, campus protests, The Weathermen, Vietnam, Nixon, Woodstock, Drug Laws, Court Cases, Wire Taps, Kent State, Pentagon Paper/Ellsberg, Days of Rage riots, Vietnam Moratorium demonstrations, My Lai/Hersh war crimes + investigative war reporting, domestic terrorism, FBI surveillance, Greenwich townhouse explosion, women's liberation, Black Panthers, Cambodia, and the list goes on and on.
Oral Histories are difficult to structure and sustain over an entire book. The ones that work rely on several deep sources connected by one strong sustaining story, like the CAA or ESPN or SNL books. Where this book runs into structural turbulence is in trying to fit a semester's amount of 1969/70 history with over a hundred diverse and balanced sources into chapters built around a theme but also progressing in chronological order.
So you'd have a whole chapter on The Weathermen where a lot of time and material is covered and then leave those characters hanging for a few hundred pages of campus unrest, government cover up, draft dodging, Vietnam corruption, women's lib, and then get another chapter of The Weathermen. Therefore it's a bit schizophrenic in style to read straightforwardly and keep ordered in your mind.
You run into some slow spots where it feels like homework and then in other sections you're speeding through a developing story only to then jump into something completely different when the chapter ends.
Structural and thematic issues aside, this is clearly an important book and one very much of this time. While I had studied the end of the sixties (as it related to Hunter S Thompson's life and writing, for my college thesis), MUCH of this was all new information to me - that just four decades ago there were 50 politically related bombings a day in the US and regular violent protests in the streets.
Knowing the history of protest and progress is our country is more important than ever to appreciate how far we've come (not just in Black history and Women's rights) in learning to protest peacefully and learn civil disobedience - on both sides, where the cops and government almost look restrained today (and we still have a long way to go).
If you want to cry during the first person retellings of the Kent State student senseless murders (and the first of dangerous Fake News where the government was claiming the students fired first instead of being a football field length away protesting peacefully) or try to understand the shock and horror of millions of civilian casualties at the undiscerning war in Vietnam, read this book. If you want to understand that the government used to lie to the media and citizens on a regular basis without accountability, that Hoover ran the FBI like a mafia for four administrations, and the real consequences on culture/education/family/politics of a mandatory draft that politicized millions of those affected and made people flee the country, go underground, go AWOL, become fugitives, or leak the Pentagon Papers - I mean, SHIT WAS INSANE NOT THAT LONG AGO.
And so this book, forgiven for it's flaws, deserves our attention. I'm glad I read it. This is recent history we cannot forget and we're lucky to have these stories live on in this book for future generations. I would sign up for that 1969/70 college course, because we have still so much to learn and remember and apply to today's RESISTANCE.
It's an eventful as hell year full of empathy, regret, hurt, love, wonderment, shock, awe, surprise, hate, fear, power, and powerlessness. And it all really happened. So let's learn from it.
-
"the media does not recognize organizing. It recognizes events. So just having a demonstration is not enough--if you had a demonstration, then you had to have another demonstration, it's not enough to really get the coverage. So you have to up the ante."
-
Former president Bill Clinton describes this divide: "If you look back on the sixties and, on balance, you think there was more good than harm, then you're probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."
October 7, 2016
Clara Bingham didn’t exactly write this. It consists mostly of a string of interviews with essential players in the cultural revolution of 1968-1970- Bill Ayers, John Perry Barlow, Peter Coyote, Bernadine Dohrn, Daniel Ellsberg, Jane Fonda, David Harris, Julius Lester, Erika Huggins, Oliver Stone, etc. The interviews were largely conducted in the last five years, the players reflecting with the regret and wisdom of age on the events of these chaotic and transformative times. Each chapter takes on a different topic- Woodstock and the psychedelic revolution, the rise of the Weathermen out of SDS, Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, the My Lai massacre, Cambodia, Kent State, the rise of feminism within the resistance, the back-to-the-land movement, many more. Bingham orchestrates her narrative so that the same characters reappear in the context of the different chapters. You get to know each one a little better as you go along, also remembering that we are hearing their voices from the present, after the dust has settled and we have moved into a different kind of chaos. Additionally we are reminded that Clara Bingham was born in 1963. She was in preschool when these events were happening; her perspective is not from personal involvement but a strong belief in the seminal importance of the era.
Born in 1948, I was there for all this, but I was too busy gazing at my own navel to pay much attention to what was going on around me. So this book was massively important to me an opportunity to understand the importance of the era to which I was witness. This is not a manifesto. Each character is given a human face, even Richard Nixon. I was moved to tears by the passages in which Nixon, after a night drinking and pacing the White House, rises before dawn, May 9, 1970 to make a surprise and deeply personal visit with anti-war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. Such a troubled man in such a troubled time!
Without using her own words, Clara Bingham has fashioned the most broad and open-minded book I have yet to read on these three mind-blowing years, the repercussions of which resound well into the present.
Born in 1948, I was there for all this, but I was too busy gazing at my own navel to pay much attention to what was going on around me. So this book was massively important to me an opportunity to understand the importance of the era to which I was witness. This is not a manifesto. Each character is given a human face, even Richard Nixon. I was moved to tears by the passages in which Nixon, after a night drinking and pacing the White House, rises before dawn, May 9, 1970 to make a surprise and deeply personal visit with anti-war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. Such a troubled man in such a troubled time!
Without using her own words, Clara Bingham has fashioned the most broad and open-minded book I have yet to read on these three mind-blowing years, the repercussions of which resound well into the present.
September 22, 2017
I found this book so well done. Clara Bingham takes us through 1969 through the lives of those who lived it. She interviewed most, if not all, of the major players. The author put those interviews and placed them intertwined through the year. From Weatherman, Anti-War organizations, FBI agents to those in the Nixon White House. This book taught me much more about that time, its actors and outcomes than ever before. As Ken Burn's "The Vietnam War" is showing on PBS, this book provides some deeper history on the home front.
February 6, 2017
Would have been a 4-5 star book. Out of the 76 interviewees only 16 of them were women and that really bothered me. Review to come later.
January 29, 2020
I really needed to hear this book. The history of the anti-Vietnam / equal rights / environmental movements of the 60s and 70s is deeply underrepresented. There are countless books about the Vietnam war, but much, much less about the resistance to the war and all the other resistances that sprung up around the war resistance (and all of them continue to resonate today).
Of course, it doesn't do the USA and their corrupt system any good to give voice to their most potent internal critics (sure they let them publish because of their so-called "freedom," but they also push them to the periphery); it behooves the USA, instead, to keep those voices marginal and underrepresented, so that all the USA's hard work in propaganda and indoctrination doesn't go to waste.
Knowing all of this makes Witness to the Revolution all the more important because this book is in the words of those who witnessed the era, those who resisted, those who fought the government, those who were shot by soldiers at Kent State, those who burned down or blew up government buildings, those who fled to Canada, those who lived in communes, and it is also the voices of those --FBI, CIA, government officials, President Nixon -- who tried to silence and/or stop them.
The real words of the people who were there is an invaluable piece of history (now matter how flawed eye witness accounts to anything are), and Clara Bingam makes the wise decision to let all those voices speak for themselves. There is no commentary from Bingam. Just the people who were there talking about what they saw and did.
I listened to this on audible, and I find myself deducting one star from my rating here because of the book's narrator, Jo Anna Parrin. Her voice was monotonous, nasally, and I often found myself wondering if she had bothered to preread what she was reading. Some emotional contact with the words of others would have gone a long way to mitigating the grating sound of her voice.
But that's okay. The material is strong enough to carry the day, and now that I have the physical book, I won't have to listen to it ever again.
Of course, it doesn't do the USA and their corrupt system any good to give voice to their most potent internal critics (sure they let them publish because of their so-called "freedom," but they also push them to the periphery); it behooves the USA, instead, to keep those voices marginal and underrepresented, so that all the USA's hard work in propaganda and indoctrination doesn't go to waste.
Knowing all of this makes Witness to the Revolution all the more important because this book is in the words of those who witnessed the era, those who resisted, those who fought the government, those who were shot by soldiers at Kent State, those who burned down or blew up government buildings, those who fled to Canada, those who lived in communes, and it is also the voices of those --FBI, CIA, government officials, President Nixon -- who tried to silence and/or stop them.
The real words of the people who were there is an invaluable piece of history (now matter how flawed eye witness accounts to anything are), and Clara Bingam makes the wise decision to let all those voices speak for themselves. There is no commentary from Bingam. Just the people who were there talking about what they saw and did.
I listened to this on audible, and I find myself deducting one star from my rating here because of the book's narrator, Jo Anna Parrin. Her voice was monotonous, nasally, and I often found myself wondering if she had bothered to preread what she was reading. Some emotional contact with the words of others would have gone a long way to mitigating the grating sound of her voice.
But that's okay. The material is strong enough to carry the day, and now that I have the physical book, I won't have to listen to it ever again.
May 14, 2017
1.
A while back, I was sitting outside at RISE Coffee with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure to send her such excerpts from his autobiography:
“Later, when I, as well as others, marched on Washington or Chicago, we carried with us the lessons that the local power structures had fought us tooth and nail—that racism was ingrained in the system. We also realized that the lessons came in spite of our formal education. (My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.)”
“There are lots of secret rules by which power maintains itself. Only when you challenge it, force the crisis, do you discover the true nature of society. And only at the time it chooses to teach you. Occasionally you can use your intellect to guess at the plan, but in general the secrets of power are taught in darkened police cells, back alleys, and on the street. I learned them there.”
“By 1970, my ‘plan’ to stop the war was to disrupt life on the home front. I did not see going to jail as the best use of my time.”
2.
Clara Bingham has done a riveting oral history of many of Abbie Hoffman’s peers from the Sixties, focusing in particular on the year 1969-1970 in Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul. Here’s her thesis: “Whether rebelling against the draft, the atrocities of the war, police and FBI repression, the conformity of the 1950s, the sexist, racist establishment, or all of the above, the movement in the final years of the sixties threatened the entire power structure of American society and transformed the country.” Bingham’s book will remind baby boomers and instruct their grandchildren as to how people’s experiences then may still speak to the wars being waged in our name today.
3.
Weatherman spokesperson Bernadette Dohrn: How can we still be fighting Vietnam? But we are. Why? Because it was a mass popular resistance, and the truth was told about it. It was subversive of the whole structure of what we value and what we do.
Former Weatherman Bill Ayers: Every week that the war went on, six thousand people were murdered in our names. Every week. We couldn’t stop it.
Draft resister David Harris: Our ethos was we never called anybody pigs. We were trying to get the cops to come over to our side. I went to high school with the cops. As soon as the movement got into a place where it started saying, “You’re either with us or against us,” the movement died. What worked for us was that we were always open and inclusive. We always took new people in, and we recognized that everybody started out on the wrong side. All of us had gone though a transformation to get to where we were. Our movement would thrive because everybody was going to go through that transformation, and we had to empower that transformation, which means we had to embrace whoever was out there. And that included the police.
Former civil rights activist Julius Lester: By the time SDS broke up in ’69, I was aware that the movement was falling apart. I was aware that the movement was becoming ideological. And when movements become ideological, they lose sight of people. Ideology becomes more important than people. I’m talking about all movements.
Actor Jane Fonda: The way we treated the Vietnamese belied everything I thought about my country.
Veteran medic Wayne Smith: We were broken. I had so much anger and pain. I was crushed. I left like I had blood on my hands. I resisted calling the Vietnamese gooks and dinks, but near the end of it I found those vulgar words would come out of my mouth several times; I had contempt for myself. How could I have been so stupid and foolish to believe this country? How could I have ben so foolish to think that I could really save lives as a medic? How could I really make a difference in the face of so many catastrophic injuries?
Anti-draft activist Rick Ayers: The war eventually ended because these guys wouldn’t fight. Everyone talks about the mean antiwar movement, and the poor GIs, and the antiwar movement spit on the GIs, and no one gave us a parade when we got home, which is crap. The heart of the antiwar movement was the GIs. Even on the streets it was veterans. A bunch of veterans led in all the marches. They would not fight that war. They were the ones who knew that Vietnam was a people’s war.
Former DOD consultant Daniel Ellsberg: The antiwar movement, which was extremely admirable, and conscientious, and dedicated, and right, was doing what they should have been doing, except for the violence of the Weathermen, which helped Nixon. But I would say that their efforts didn’t change Nixon’s plans and didn’t shorten the war, but it did something that they weren’t even focused on: It put a ceiling on the war, not just at one point but at many points along the way. They kept that war from getting enormously larger and more lethal than it would’ve been—as many as three to four million Vietnamese may have died during the war. Horrible. But it could easily have been ten million. When I say easily, it wasn’t just a future possibility; it’s what the Joint Chiefs were asking for.
Veteran Michael Uhl: Today the campaign to commemorate Vietnam and honors its veterans serves a similar service, to further remove the onus of having participated in a bad war by abstracting the veteran from the bad history of the war, and honoring them for just showing up (thank you for your service), and for which the word valor serves as a convenient euphemism. Thankfully, there are still many of us who refuse to buy into that historical falsification, and who wish to see an honest portrayal of the Vietnam War passed down to future generations.
4.
Remember [in the 1980s], thousands of well-to-do mainstream Americans went to Central America to do things like living in villages, on the assumption that a white face might restrict terror against these people. This has never happened in the history of imperialism. Nobody ever dreamed of going to live in a Vietnamese village to protect people against marauding soldiers in the 1960s.… In no imperial war that I can remember did massive numbers of citizens go to protect the victims of their own country.
—Noam Chomsky, Democracy and Power: The Delhi Lectures
A while back, I was sitting outside at RISE Coffee with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure to send her such excerpts from his autobiography:
“Later, when I, as well as others, marched on Washington or Chicago, we carried with us the lessons that the local power structures had fought us tooth and nail—that racism was ingrained in the system. We also realized that the lessons came in spite of our formal education. (My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.)”
“There are lots of secret rules by which power maintains itself. Only when you challenge it, force the crisis, do you discover the true nature of society. And only at the time it chooses to teach you. Occasionally you can use your intellect to guess at the plan, but in general the secrets of power are taught in darkened police cells, back alleys, and on the street. I learned them there.”
“By 1970, my ‘plan’ to stop the war was to disrupt life on the home front. I did not see going to jail as the best use of my time.”
2.
Clara Bingham has done a riveting oral history of many of Abbie Hoffman’s peers from the Sixties, focusing in particular on the year 1969-1970 in Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul. Here’s her thesis: “Whether rebelling against the draft, the atrocities of the war, police and FBI repression, the conformity of the 1950s, the sexist, racist establishment, or all of the above, the movement in the final years of the sixties threatened the entire power structure of American society and transformed the country.” Bingham’s book will remind baby boomers and instruct their grandchildren as to how people’s experiences then may still speak to the wars being waged in our name today.
3.
Weatherman spokesperson Bernadette Dohrn: How can we still be fighting Vietnam? But we are. Why? Because it was a mass popular resistance, and the truth was told about it. It was subversive of the whole structure of what we value and what we do.
Former Weatherman Bill Ayers: Every week that the war went on, six thousand people were murdered in our names. Every week. We couldn’t stop it.
Draft resister David Harris: Our ethos was we never called anybody pigs. We were trying to get the cops to come over to our side. I went to high school with the cops. As soon as the movement got into a place where it started saying, “You’re either with us or against us,” the movement died. What worked for us was that we were always open and inclusive. We always took new people in, and we recognized that everybody started out on the wrong side. All of us had gone though a transformation to get to where we were. Our movement would thrive because everybody was going to go through that transformation, and we had to empower that transformation, which means we had to embrace whoever was out there. And that included the police.
Former civil rights activist Julius Lester: By the time SDS broke up in ’69, I was aware that the movement was falling apart. I was aware that the movement was becoming ideological. And when movements become ideological, they lose sight of people. Ideology becomes more important than people. I’m talking about all movements.
Actor Jane Fonda: The way we treated the Vietnamese belied everything I thought about my country.
Veteran medic Wayne Smith: We were broken. I had so much anger and pain. I was crushed. I left like I had blood on my hands. I resisted calling the Vietnamese gooks and dinks, but near the end of it I found those vulgar words would come out of my mouth several times; I had contempt for myself. How could I have been so stupid and foolish to believe this country? How could I have ben so foolish to think that I could really save lives as a medic? How could I really make a difference in the face of so many catastrophic injuries?
Anti-draft activist Rick Ayers: The war eventually ended because these guys wouldn’t fight. Everyone talks about the mean antiwar movement, and the poor GIs, and the antiwar movement spit on the GIs, and no one gave us a parade when we got home, which is crap. The heart of the antiwar movement was the GIs. Even on the streets it was veterans. A bunch of veterans led in all the marches. They would not fight that war. They were the ones who knew that Vietnam was a people’s war.
Former DOD consultant Daniel Ellsberg: The antiwar movement, which was extremely admirable, and conscientious, and dedicated, and right, was doing what they should have been doing, except for the violence of the Weathermen, which helped Nixon. But I would say that their efforts didn’t change Nixon’s plans and didn’t shorten the war, but it did something that they weren’t even focused on: It put a ceiling on the war, not just at one point but at many points along the way. They kept that war from getting enormously larger and more lethal than it would’ve been—as many as three to four million Vietnamese may have died during the war. Horrible. But it could easily have been ten million. When I say easily, it wasn’t just a future possibility; it’s what the Joint Chiefs were asking for.
Veteran Michael Uhl: Today the campaign to commemorate Vietnam and honors its veterans serves a similar service, to further remove the onus of having participated in a bad war by abstracting the veteran from the bad history of the war, and honoring them for just showing up (thank you for your service), and for which the word valor serves as a convenient euphemism. Thankfully, there are still many of us who refuse to buy into that historical falsification, and who wish to see an honest portrayal of the Vietnam War passed down to future generations.
4.
Remember [in the 1980s], thousands of well-to-do mainstream Americans went to Central America to do things like living in villages, on the assumption that a white face might restrict terror against these people. This has never happened in the history of imperialism. Nobody ever dreamed of going to live in a Vietnamese village to protect people against marauding soldiers in the 1960s.… In no imperial war that I can remember did massive numbers of citizens go to protect the victims of their own country.
—Noam Chomsky, Democracy and Power: The Delhi Lectures
April 10, 2016
Witness to the Revolution is a powerful, compelling, intense, immersive, easy to read, hard to put down, brilliant book. I absolutely loved the author's unique approach in writing this. Rather than using interviews as research, then stringing together a chronological, impersonal narration, the author lets her interviewees tell the story in their own words. Clara Bingham puts these pieces together in order of events, as well as dividing them by specific topics (Woodstock, Weathermen, My Lai, etc.). We're shown all sides of the tumultuous era; from conservatives, to hippies and the drug culture, to hard-core activists. The result is a stunning and comprehensive account of one of the most divisive periods in American history.
Time and distance allow us to reexamine past events, but even then we are often shown a skewed image, or perhaps a narrow and biased (unintentional or not) focus. Clara Bingham has given us the gift of an expansive view, so we all might see what the other side saw at the time, good, bad, or indifferent.
In reading this, it's difficult not to be struck by just how close the US came to a full out revolution. I also found myself pondering our current state of general complacency. Some people say that eliminating the draft was not a good thing, because it allows us the freedom to disconnect from politics that aren't directly effecting us. Perhaps that's true. This book certainly gives us much to consider.
I could go on and on about the attributes of this book. But, really, the most important thing I can tell you is to read it.
*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine, for my honest review.*
Time and distance allow us to reexamine past events, but even then we are often shown a skewed image, or perhaps a narrow and biased (unintentional or not) focus. Clara Bingham has given us the gift of an expansive view, so we all might see what the other side saw at the time, good, bad, or indifferent.
In reading this, it's difficult not to be struck by just how close the US came to a full out revolution. I also found myself pondering our current state of general complacency. Some people say that eliminating the draft was not a good thing, because it allows us the freedom to disconnect from politics that aren't directly effecting us. Perhaps that's true. This book certainly gives us much to consider.
I could go on and on about the attributes of this book. But, really, the most important thing I can tell you is to read it.
*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine, for my honest review.*
July 18, 2016
Reading this was like a fascinating trip on a time machine, back to an era we all once wished we would forget but now need to be reminded of given the violence that seems to threaten our way of life. It's essentially about the U.S. school year 1969 when all hell broke loose, anarchy prevailed and it appeared the U.S. was on the verge of a revolution. Nixon, escalation in Vietnam, the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers, the SNCC and the SDS, Weathermen, draft resistance, riots and killings on campus, bombings, the Pentagon Papers, LSD, Woodstock, the counterculture, incredible police brutality, you name it. I was in high school at the time (class of '71) so only witnessed it all vicariously, but this book brought all the memories flooding back in. The story is masterfully told through extensive interviews with the primary players on the stage at the time, including Bernadine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and many others who went underground, were arrested, bombed buildings, moved to Canada, were on the FBI's most wanted list, etc., etc. One of the most stunning factoids was that, between January 1969 and March 1970, there was an average of 50 bombings every day in this country. Do you remember the bomb destruction of the Army Math Center at the University of Wisconsin, the worst terrorist attack in this country until Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma City? Do you remember the three Weathermen who blew themselves and the NY townhouse they were "borrowing" while making a bomb? I didn't. If there's a lesson for today in this, it's that we can get through a period as horrible as that and survive as a healthy nation.
March 3, 2021
This is pretty disappointing, it just takes a bunch of of people who were radicals and interviews them, and that would be fine except not one of them is of a different opinion than "the 1970s was excellent and there were no issues with activism back then", which is pretty bad if you want to actually get into the nitty-gritty of what happened and why. Activism always has a capacity to go too far, and leads to negative as well as positive repercussions. All of these interview subjects have their nostalgia about the 1970s, despite the fact that very few human actions lead to just good things, and fewer still come without a cost. There was little overview or context given for this stuff, and I really don't like the simple assertions these people made like: "Backing out of a draft isn't cowardice because I say so", or "Revolution is always positive", or "everything that happened in this decade was awesome because I said so, to disagree or questions that is immoral". These assertions are so close-minded and not backed by facts that it's astoundingly naïve at best, idiotic at worst. But, on the plus side this author was kind enough to drop names and events constantly in the introduction without explaining them, so.. now I have a treasure trove of American history events and people to look up that I've never heard about in school.
December 28, 2017
Though this book is a tome I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook. This was a book I gave a second chance to after I lost interest in the physical copy I listened to this oral history of events instead and became intensely interested in what I was hearing. This book covers all of the bases of 1968-1970 from the Vietnam war, the Kent State shooting, LSD use, the Mei Lai massacre, Nixon, the weathermen, the Black Panthers, and the anti war movement.
Honestly I was shocked by the wide range of coverage that this book offers. I learned so much about the 1960’s that I didn’t already know. If you’re a fan of the 60’s or of history in general give this oral history a try.
Did you learn anything new from this book?
Honestly I was shocked by the wide range of coverage that this book offers. I learned so much about the 1960’s that I didn’t already know. If you’re a fan of the 60’s or of history in general give this oral history a try.
Did you learn anything new from this book?
November 18, 2016
Whether on lived through this era and witnessed the revolution of the 60s or not, this richly detailed book is superb. Anyone who wants to learn what really happend and the stories behind the events will love this book. The rebellion began due to the Vietnam War which dragged on for over a decade began the questioning of authority. All the movement leaders are there with the comments about events. The book begins with Woodstock and winds through the movements for civil rights for blacks and women and young Americans who were being drafted and killed by the thousands. Question Authority was the motto, and question they did.
June 1, 2017
A very interesting look back at an incredibly turbulent time in our history. If you lived though the 60's & 70's this will bring back a lot of memories and give you some details you probably never knew or have forgotten about the anti war protests, Vietnam, Weathermen, Black Panthers, Woodstock, LBJ, Nixon, etc.
The book goes back and forth quoting from interviews of people who were involved and their recollections. This can make the book a confusing at times but the perspectives of these people gave the book depth and authenticity. It is a bit long and it started a little slow but well worth the read.
The book goes back and forth quoting from interviews of people who were involved and their recollections. This can make the book a confusing at times but the perspectives of these people gave the book depth and authenticity. It is a bit long and it started a little slow but well worth the read.
July 12, 2017
Fantastic collection of oral histories from 1969-1970. A must read for anyone interested in the activism of the time. My favourite aspect of the book was its inclusion of dissenting, pro-government voices and its embracing of controversial aspects of the radical movement. I would love to read a follow up centred around cowboy culture and the emergence of the New Right. 10/10
October 10, 2017
If you can remember this book, you weren't there.
June 20, 2018
Very biased and one sided. Everyone interviewed was against the war. No one with a different point of view was mentioned
June 5, 2021
Way too focused on white men
August 28, 2022
This was one of the best nonfiction books I've read in a long time. It was endlessly fascinating. I'm embarrassed about how little I know about so many things that happened in the late 60s to early 70s, but especially in the summer of '69 to summer/fall of '70 which this book predominantly covers. The author does a remarkable job giving just enough information about key political, social, and cultural moments and movements through the oral histories of those who were there without overwhelming the reader with dry textbook-like facts and figures. Rather, the oral history format kept it interesting and made for a fairly quick read. It's not often that I think, "Oh, I'll just read one more chapter" while reading nonfiction. I learned so much about things I've always heard about, but never had a full understanding of: My Lai, the Pentagon Papers, Kent State, the anti-war movement and myriad other things. I was only 2 when this pivotal year took place, but I'd like to think that I would have been one of the peaceful protestors had I come of age during the 60s. I highly recommend this book. ✌️☮️
February 11, 2020
The author/head interviewer for this clearly has bought into the idea put forward by so many of the 60’s hippies whose voices she weaves together that ‘culture eats politics for breakfast’, which is laughably false; but, that being said, this is a very engaging read and the oral history format really helps uncover contradictions and useful lessons from that history.
“I tried to understand what motivated people to act the way they did, and capture the visionary idealism and high passion of that year and decade, but I didn’t shy away from revealing the excess and squalor of the times - the drug abuse, sex abuse, commune chaos, radical political irrationality, and violent extremism.”
“I tried to understand what motivated people to act the way they did, and capture the visionary idealism and high passion of that year and decade, but I didn’t shy away from revealing the excess and squalor of the times - the drug abuse, sex abuse, commune chaos, radical political irrationality, and violent extremism.”
November 23, 2020
Biggggg fan. Instead of the author telling it like was, it's interviews with all the different blokes on the ground throughout history. Provided a lot of insight into how radical some of these social movements were compared to today. Memory isn't as fresh on this one, but particularly liked the chapter on psychedelics and Timothy Leary's ode to "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Just very informative of all those different movements going on that sometimes get a bit overshadowed by Vietnam, but there was so much going on at that time(s).
I should lend this book to Mike.
Also lots of good music + a Spotify playlist.
[Exact dates unsure, finished early pandemic]
I should lend this book to Mike.
Also lots of good music + a Spotify playlist.
[Exact dates unsure, finished early pandemic]
May 22, 2018
Remembering what is was like
A powerful account derived from scores of oral histories. The author skillfully weaves these disparate narratives into a powerful account of 1969-70. Very raw nerves lie near the surface. Some of the narratives seem like Monday morning quarterbacking and others seem ripe with their agendas. But many of the voices seem honest and unflinching, and the summing up of the era is almost ghastly. While the cultural war was won, the political battle was lost. And it's not clear from many of these voices that the trade off was worth it.
A powerful account derived from scores of oral histories. The author skillfully weaves these disparate narratives into a powerful account of 1969-70. Very raw nerves lie near the surface. Some of the narratives seem like Monday morning quarterbacking and others seem ripe with their agendas. But many of the voices seem honest and unflinching, and the summing up of the era is almost ghastly. While the cultural war was won, the political battle was lost. And it's not clear from many of these voices that the trade off was worth it.
December 26, 2023
As someone who came of age in 1969-1970 and participated in many of the events described in Bingham's exhaustive narrative, it was revelatory to hear from so many of the major players and to get their perspectives decades later on what they did, saw, thought, and believed, and also to learn what they went on to do later in life.
I think of this time often these days. In many ways it was a difficult time for so many people, but unlike today it was also a time of great optimism. Her book captures both aspects, perhaps more cogently and powerfully than anything I've seen in a very long time.
I think of this time often these days. In many ways it was a difficult time for so many people, but unlike today it was also a time of great optimism. Her book captures both aspects, perhaps more cogently and powerfully than anything I've seen in a very long time.
August 11, 2025
Excellent! It is a collection of comments from people who participated in protests in the sixties in America. Sixties being the period 1965-75. What was it like to be a student at Kent State on the day when students were shot? How do the Weather Underground feel about what they did? Lots of recollections from black activists, people who were in Vietnam, and.so on. Government officials and cops too. I like that period of history. I was a high school kid in Dunedin, reading Time magazine every week. It was a very unusual time and place. This book really brings it to life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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