Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & '70s

by Peter Braunstein, Michael William Doyle (Editor)

Amidst the recent flourishing of Sixties scholarship, Imagine Nation is the first collection to focus solely on the counterculture. Its fourteen provocative essays seek to unearth the complexity and rediscover the society-changing power of significant movements and figures.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, United States, Counter Culture

412 pages, Paperback

First published October 19, 2001

Reviews

[Natalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

did not and will not finish. this is one of the most painful books I've had the displeasure of trying to read. :/

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Key Points:

1. The American counterculture was the result of a long process of anti-establishment sentiment: 'The Sixties counterculture in the United States didn't come out of nowhere: it appeared gradually as a ripening of popular discontent over America's shrill postwar triumphalism.' (8)

2. The counterculture should not be considered as a social movement, but instead as "an inherently unstable collection of attitudes, tendencies, postures, gestures, "lifestyles"'. (10)

3. "The state was erected on the platform of culture, not vice versa as a vulgar Marxist might argue." (10)

4. Two 'major phase(s)' of the Sixties- the 'Flower Power', utopian stage fueled by the expectancy of 'post-scarcity society' and the later, post-69 stage marked by racial tensions, economic downturn and the fragmentation of the counterculture.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays about the counterculture.