The Thirty Years' Wars: Dispatches and Diversions of a Radical Journalist, 1965-1994

by Andrew Kopkind, Joann Wypijewski (Editor)

This volume represents the 30 years‘ aftershocks of the cataclysmic battles of the 1960s, as recorded by one of the major journalists of that generation. A chronicle of political and cultural life from 1965 until Andrew Kopkind‘s death in October of 1994, it tracks the black civil rights movement, the New Left, Prague in the wake of Soviet invasion and Moscow during the Soviet collapse, Woodstock, drug wars, blue-collar attitudes, Christian soldiers and gay soldiers. As a gay man, Kopkind understood that there is no pure realm of the personal, and his writing captures history as it happened.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Kate Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Radical journalism at its best. Kopkind is engaging and smart, whether the subject is race riots or wild game dinners. His sensibilities always rest with the most 'lumpen' of the proletariat -- if there's a conflict between a principled theorist and an unruly mob of underlings, Kopkind sides consistently with the mob, pushing our outraged shock into understanding and love.

In the book's first essays, which deal with hugely important subject matter, Kopkind hasn't developed his crackling, brilliant style. Wait for it: you'll be glad you did. And then after the explosion in an apartment that killed three Weathermen, when Kopkind breaks and loses hope of revolution happening in America, even still, keep reading. Through disco and the Reagan years -- Kopkind is a realist but with a mind like this there's always room for hope.

[Carlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kopkind was probably the best radical journalist to come from the US 60s movements. Post-Seattle Indymedia journalists may appreciate his ability to combine radical analysis with serious dispatches from the streets. Wrote for Ramparts, Hard Times, May Day, Real Paper (Boston), then later for The Nation....

[Frederic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of political pieces from the mid-'60's through the mid-'90's...amazingly accurate in analysis and haruspication...a wrongheaded(to my mind)evaluation of Munich '72,a bit too critical of Dr. King and too optimistic about the possibility of "real" Revolution but otherwise a terrific example of Journalism(the Late,Lamented) as the First Draft of History...