Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History

by Van Gosse

PART INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Defining the Sixties and the New Left America in the 1950' The Best of all Possible Worlds The New Left's Origins in the Old Left PART TWO, 1955-1965: The Renewal of Dissent The Black Freedom From 'Civil Rights' to 'Freedom Now' Challenging the Cold 'Ban the Bomb! Fair Play for Cuba' Northern Students Demand 'Free Speech' and 'participatory Democracy' Underground Feminists and Homophiles 'The Problems That Have No Name' Vietnam and 'The War at Home' Black Power 'A Nation Within a Nation' Red Brown, and Yellow Power in 'Occupied America' The New Feminism and Women's 'The Personal is Political' From Gay Liberation to Gay 'Out of the Closets and Into the Streets' Winning and Losing at the Same The New Left Becomes America

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Van Gosse is professor of history at Franklin and Marshall College.

Reviews

[Campbell Geary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful and interesting overview and perspective.

[Michael Paone · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an attempt to synthesize the various activist groups that coalesced into the New Left. Rejecting the restrictive and arbitrary nature of focusing on the 1960s as a decade, Rethinking instead seeks to discuss the groups that made the New Left. The problem with this approach is that between Students for a Democratic Society, SNCC, the Black Power movement, Stonewall, the Berkley Free Speech Movement, and the Chicano Movement all end up being insufficiently discussed in the short 200 or so pages. Still, if one is seeking a broad overview of the groups that made up the New Lefr, this will serve your purpose well.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

good perspective

[Chris]

Handy as a narrative of the new left from the civil rights movement through the 1970s, but less successful at posing interesting questions about the period. Still, a quick and easy read.