Sixties Europe

by Timothy Scott Brown

Sixties Europe examines the border-crossing uprisings of the 1960s in Europe on both sides of the Cold War divide. Placing European developments within a global context formed by Third World liberation struggles and Cold War geopolitics, Timothy Scott Brown highlights the importance of transnational exchanges across bloc boundaries. New Left ideas and cultural practices easily crossed bloc boundaries, but Brown demonstrates that the 1960s in Europe did not simply unfold according to a normative western model. Everywhere, innovations in the arts and popular culture synergized radical politics as advocates of workers' democracy emerged to pursue longstanding demands predating the Cold War divide. Tracing the development of a distinctive blend of cultural and political activism across diverse national settings, Sixties Europe examines an important, historically-recent attempt to address unresolved questions about human social organization that remain relevant in the present, and it offers an original history of Europe across a transformative decade.

Genres: History

250 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2020

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timothy Scott Brown is one of the leading figures in the transnational group of scholars exploring the multiple dimensions of "1968" a.k.a. "The Long Sixties." Sixties Europe is the culmination of his project, a central part of the core library of books on the decade. He's particularly good at outlining the differences and convergences between the Sixties in different parts of Europe, including the often overlooked conservative bastions of Greece, Portugal and Spain. He makes a compelling case for placing '68 in a sequence of crucial dates including 1956 (Hungary) and 1989 (the disintegration of the Communist bloc.). You won't find much of the history of what the Sixties felt like--people are present mostly for the ideas they articulate--but it's a very valuable book.

[Patrick Townshend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully concise yet wide-ranging introduction to a period I knew quite little about before reading this book.