The American Counterculture: A History of Hippies and Cultural Dissidents

by Damon Bach

Restricted to the shorthand of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” the counterculture would seem to be a brief, vibrant stretch of the 1960s. But the American counterculture, as this book clearly demonstrates, was far more than a historical blip and its impact continues to resonate. In this comprehensive history, Damon R. Bach traces the counterculture from its antecedents in the 1950s through its emergence and massive expansion in the 1960s to its demise in the 1970s and persistent echoes in the decades since.

The counterculture, as Bach tells it, evolved in discrete stages and his book describes its development from coast to heartland to coast as it evolved into a national phenomenon, involving a diverse array of participants and undergoing fundamental changes between 1965 and 1974. Hippiedom appears here in relationship to the era’s movements—civil rights, women’s and gay liberation, Red and Black Power, the New Left, and environmentalism. In its connection to other forces of the time, Bach contends that the counterculture’s central objective was to create a new, superior society based on alternative values and institutions. Drawing for the first time on documents produced by self-described “freaks” from 1964 through 1973—underground newspapers, memoirs, personal correspondence, flyers, and pamphlets—his book creates an unusually nuanced, colorful, and complete picture of a time often portrayed in clichéd or nostalgic terms.

This is the counterculture of love-ins and flower children, of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, but also of antiwar demonstrations, communes, co-ops, head shops, cultural feminism, Earth Day, and antinuclear activism. What Damon R. Bach conjures is the counterculture in all of its permutations and ramifications as he illuminates its complexity, continually evolving values, and constantly changing components and adherents, which defined and redefined it throughout its near decade-long existence. In the long run, Bach convincingly argues that the counterculture spearheaded cultural transformation, leaving a changed America in its wake.

360 pages, Paperback

Published December 3, 2020

Reviews

[Campbell Geary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview that provides some new interpretations of the legacy of the counterculture supported by evidence. Will be helpful for my honors capstone

[Meredith Russow · Rating 5 out of 5]

yay

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best single synthetic history of the hippie counterculture. I'll get my caveat out of the way first: like many who have dealt with the period, Bach founders on the problem of definition, attempting to sketch categories that distinguish various mixes of the political and cultural approaches of young people who in some way left or challenged the mainstream culture. He takes as his point of departure the notion that the New Left and Counterculture were fundamentally different things, which, if true at all, is true only for a short period of time and in a few places. Fortunately, he's too good a thinker and writer to let that interfere too much with the book's real strengths. He's done an excellent job familiarizing himself with the relevant sources. For someone like myself deeply grounded in them, his presentation rings true--he chooses the right voices and examples with great consistency, and even when I've worked through some of the questions slightly differently, I don't think he's distorted evidence to fit his thesis. Sex, drugs and rock and roll are part of the story, but so are more mundane details of what people did with themselves day by day and how the counterculture responded to/was shaped by the changing political currents.

As good a place as any, far better than most, to start for readers curious about what now seems a strange and distant way of life.

[Bob Lynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like Trvial Pursuit

[Ellie]

for class