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A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America
At mid-century, Americans increasingly fell in love with characters like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye and Marlon Brando's Johnny in The Wild One , musicians like Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, and activists like the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These emotions enabled some middle-class whites to cut free of their own histories and identify with those who, while lacking economic, political, or social privilege, seemed to possess instead vital cultural resources and a depth of feeling not found in "grey flannel" America.
In this wide-ranging and vividly written cultural history, Grace Elizabeth Hale sheds light on why so many white middle-class Americans chose to re-imagine themselves as outsiders in the second half of the twentieth century and explains how this unprecedented shift changed American culture and society. Love for outsiders launched the politics of both the New Left and the New Right. From the mid-sixties through the eighties, it flourished in the hippie counterculture, the back-to-the-land movement, the Jesus People movement, and among fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians working to position their traditional isolation and separatism as strengths. It changed the very meaning of "authenticity" and "community."
Ultimately, the romance of the outsider provided a creative resolution to an intractable mid-century cultural and political conflict-the struggle between the desire for self-determination and autonomy and the desire for a morally meaningful and authentic life.
In this wide-ranging and vividly written cultural history, Grace Elizabeth Hale sheds light on why so many white middle-class Americans chose to re-imagine themselves as outsiders in the second half of the twentieth century and explains how this unprecedented shift changed American culture and society. Love for outsiders launched the politics of both the New Left and the New Right. From the mid-sixties through the eighties, it flourished in the hippie counterculture, the back-to-the-land movement, the Jesus People movement, and among fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians working to position their traditional isolation and separatism as strengths. It changed the very meaning of "authenticity" and "community."
Ultimately, the romance of the outsider provided a creative resolution to an intractable mid-century cultural and political conflict-the struggle between the desire for self-determination and autonomy and the desire for a morally meaningful and authentic life.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published December 14, 2010
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July 24, 2025
America's Romance With The Outsider
It is rare to find a scholarly book that captures both a broad history and the landmarks of one's own life. As a child of post WWII America, I found this book told me a good deal about the era in which I have lived. It brought back memories. The book is also about a subject -- the American outsider -- that I have thought about for a long time. I learned a great deal from this book by Grace Elizabeth Hale, "A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America" (2011), even if I might not have discussed the issue myself in precisely her way. Hale is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Virginia. She has written an earlier book, "Making Whiteness: the Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890 -- 1940". Her new book on outsiders also has as a major theme the manner in which white middle-class Americans have perceived African Americans. The book is published by Oxford University Press.
In her new book, Hale examines what Hale describes as the "history of a knot of desire, fantasy, and identification" that constitutes the romance of the outsider, the "belief that people somehow marginal to society possess cultural resources and values missing among other Americans." She traces the large role of the outsider in 19th Century America through Thoreau, bohemia, and, in particular, ministrely as practiced by both African Americans and whites. The focus remains, however, on America after WW II.
Hale argues that American life following the war was dominated by the image of the outsider and she explores why this was the case. She finds Americans became fascinated with the outsider as a result of their dissatisfaction with centrism -- what they came to find as the materialism, boredom and lack of deeply felt commitments in middle class suburban life. Americans took to and identified with the figure of the outsider or rebel, whom they frequently, but not always, identified with African Americans in the South. By identifying with the outsider, Hale maintains, Americans pursued two not fully consistent ends: first, they pursued what they viewed as their own independence and individual autonomy. Second, Americans, in their fascination with outsiders, wanted connectedness and value, a sense of sharing with others. Developing these two goals is critical to the exploration of the outsider that Hale undertakes in her detailed modern history.
A strength of Hale's book is her exploration of the role of the outsider on both the left and right of America's political spectrum. The relationship between the fascination with outsiders and leftist politics is not hard to find. But Hale shows that some modern American conservatives, especially William F. Buckley, also positioned themselves, accurately enough, as outsiders in that they were opposing the liberal consensus developing in the 1950s. Later day conservatives and members of the religious right, including Jerry Falwell, also portrayed their movement in terms of outsiders, conservative, evangelical Christians, looking for their voice. Other religious outsiders, such as the Jesus People of the late 1960s -- early 1970s, appear for the most part apolitical. Hale links outsiders of the left and right to show their commonalities. She perceptively concludes that the fascination with outsiders is neither left nor right but rather involves a rejection of centrism and conformity.
In the first part of her study, "Learning to Love Outsiders" Hale examines the source of Americans' fascination with outsiders in the books, movies, and music of the 1950s. Among the best sections of her book are the early, nuanced discussions of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Kerouac's "On the Road". Both these books, which carefully read will each bear several competing interpretations, played large roles in stating and developing the alienation of young Americans from the worlds of their parents. Hale discusses early rock and roll with Elvis Presley and the strong influence of African American rhythm and blues and the perceived influence of African American sensuality. The largest part of her discussion concerns Bob Dylan and the growth of American folk music with its search for authenticity. In the "authenticity" romance, in which practitioners largely misinterpreted earlier popular music and turned it to their own image, many people saw authenticity and sincerity as values above all others. Furthermore, they internalized the concept of authenticity to make it solely a matter of feelings and the heart rather than following a relationship to other people based upon considerations such as nationality, religion, gender, or occupation. The search for an internalized "authenticity" dominates the fascination with outsiders who are thought to have more of it than the people in the center.
In the second part of the book, Hale discusses the role of the outsider as it played out in the variations of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and the 1960s. She discusses how the black power movement rejected middle class American imaginations of the outsider and how these imaginations then transferred, in many instances, to other causes. Hale offers what I thought was a sympathetic look at the Jesus people and their attempts to return to God, as they perceived God, and a far less sympathetic look at Jerry Falwell and at abortion opponents who coopted the peaceful disobedience techniques utilized by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s to pursue their disagreement with legalized abortion.
Throughout the book and in a too-brief concluding chapter, Hale tries to assess the strengths and weaknesses of American's view of the outsider. The concept of the outsider has become so broad that, except for extreme cases, it is now difficult to distinguish it from the mainstream. Hale finds that the focus on outsiders creates a largely imaginary portrayal of the outsider figure and frequently works to avoid focusing upon and addressing hard, concrete issues. But she also finds that the outsider myth works "because it denies at the imaginary level the contradictions between the human fantasy of absolute individual autonomy and the human need for grounding in historical and contemporary social connections." It also is important, for Hale, because it encourages the middle class and those in authority to put aside and disavow the economic and political power they have in favor of other goals. She concludes that the time has come to develop "a new romance" in the loose tradition of the outsider. (p.. 308)
The book is carefully, thoughtfully, and on the whole even-handedly written. It is dense and well-documented. Although there is no bibliography, the detailed and substantive endnotes refer to a large range of important source material. In reading this book, I was reminded of some of the preoccupations, good and bad, of my life, and was able to understand them more fully. This book is valuable in its understanding of American life in the mid-20th Century.
Robin Friedman
It is rare to find a scholarly book that captures both a broad history and the landmarks of one's own life. As a child of post WWII America, I found this book told me a good deal about the era in which I have lived. It brought back memories. The book is also about a subject -- the American outsider -- that I have thought about for a long time. I learned a great deal from this book by Grace Elizabeth Hale, "A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America" (2011), even if I might not have discussed the issue myself in precisely her way. Hale is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Virginia. She has written an earlier book, "Making Whiteness: the Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890 -- 1940". Her new book on outsiders also has as a major theme the manner in which white middle-class Americans have perceived African Americans. The book is published by Oxford University Press.
In her new book, Hale examines what Hale describes as the "history of a knot of desire, fantasy, and identification" that constitutes the romance of the outsider, the "belief that people somehow marginal to society possess cultural resources and values missing among other Americans." She traces the large role of the outsider in 19th Century America through Thoreau, bohemia, and, in particular, ministrely as practiced by both African Americans and whites. The focus remains, however, on America after WW II.
Hale argues that American life following the war was dominated by the image of the outsider and she explores why this was the case. She finds Americans became fascinated with the outsider as a result of their dissatisfaction with centrism -- what they came to find as the materialism, boredom and lack of deeply felt commitments in middle class suburban life. Americans took to and identified with the figure of the outsider or rebel, whom they frequently, but not always, identified with African Americans in the South. By identifying with the outsider, Hale maintains, Americans pursued two not fully consistent ends: first, they pursued what they viewed as their own independence and individual autonomy. Second, Americans, in their fascination with outsiders, wanted connectedness and value, a sense of sharing with others. Developing these two goals is critical to the exploration of the outsider that Hale undertakes in her detailed modern history.
A strength of Hale's book is her exploration of the role of the outsider on both the left and right of America's political spectrum. The relationship between the fascination with outsiders and leftist politics is not hard to find. But Hale shows that some modern American conservatives, especially William F. Buckley, also positioned themselves, accurately enough, as outsiders in that they were opposing the liberal consensus developing in the 1950s. Later day conservatives and members of the religious right, including Jerry Falwell, also portrayed their movement in terms of outsiders, conservative, evangelical Christians, looking for their voice. Other religious outsiders, such as the Jesus People of the late 1960s -- early 1970s, appear for the most part apolitical. Hale links outsiders of the left and right to show their commonalities. She perceptively concludes that the fascination with outsiders is neither left nor right but rather involves a rejection of centrism and conformity.
In the first part of her study, "Learning to Love Outsiders" Hale examines the source of Americans' fascination with outsiders in the books, movies, and music of the 1950s. Among the best sections of her book are the early, nuanced discussions of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Kerouac's "On the Road". Both these books, which carefully read will each bear several competing interpretations, played large roles in stating and developing the alienation of young Americans from the worlds of their parents. Hale discusses early rock and roll with Elvis Presley and the strong influence of African American rhythm and blues and the perceived influence of African American sensuality. The largest part of her discussion concerns Bob Dylan and the growth of American folk music with its search for authenticity. In the "authenticity" romance, in which practitioners largely misinterpreted earlier popular music and turned it to their own image, many people saw authenticity and sincerity as values above all others. Furthermore, they internalized the concept of authenticity to make it solely a matter of feelings and the heart rather than following a relationship to other people based upon considerations such as nationality, religion, gender, or occupation. The search for an internalized "authenticity" dominates the fascination with outsiders who are thought to have more of it than the people in the center.
In the second part of the book, Hale discusses the role of the outsider as it played out in the variations of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and the 1960s. She discusses how the black power movement rejected middle class American imaginations of the outsider and how these imaginations then transferred, in many instances, to other causes. Hale offers what I thought was a sympathetic look at the Jesus people and their attempts to return to God, as they perceived God, and a far less sympathetic look at Jerry Falwell and at abortion opponents who coopted the peaceful disobedience techniques utilized by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s to pursue their disagreement with legalized abortion.
Throughout the book and in a too-brief concluding chapter, Hale tries to assess the strengths and weaknesses of American's view of the outsider. The concept of the outsider has become so broad that, except for extreme cases, it is now difficult to distinguish it from the mainstream. Hale finds that the focus on outsiders creates a largely imaginary portrayal of the outsider figure and frequently works to avoid focusing upon and addressing hard, concrete issues. But she also finds that the outsider myth works "because it denies at the imaginary level the contradictions between the human fantasy of absolute individual autonomy and the human need for grounding in historical and contemporary social connections." It also is important, for Hale, because it encourages the middle class and those in authority to put aside and disavow the economic and political power they have in favor of other goals. She concludes that the time has come to develop "a new romance" in the loose tradition of the outsider. (p.. 308)
The book is carefully, thoughtfully, and on the whole even-handedly written. It is dense and well-documented. Although there is no bibliography, the detailed and substantive endnotes refer to a large range of important source material. In reading this book, I was reminded of some of the preoccupations, good and bad, of my life, and was able to understand them more fully. This book is valuable in its understanding of American life in the mid-20th Century.
Robin Friedman
July 4, 2015
A thought provoking into America's romanticism with outsiders. Hale examines how American society embraced Salinger, Elvis, Buckley, the Christian Right, Folk Music, and radical left and right movements. The fascination of outsiders begins with sympathetic support of the subjects causes but often times yields a majority outlook thus undermining the rebel persona. One of the most fascinating topics was how New Right coalitions based their strategies off of civil rights protests. Be warned though, the last two chapters will give you the willies since the subjects are scary. Very interesting read.
March 12, 2014
Makes several interesting and well-thought out connections, but is poorly edited. The first few chapters speak to the title, while the second half of the book mostly analyzes Christian fundamentalists. Definitely worth a look.
May 17, 2022
This is a reasonably strongly argued book about an interesting subject that I think gets some important things wrong. It asks bigger questions and ranges more widely than is typical for academic works of American history these days. It’s all there in that sentence-length subtitle: how did rebellion become as popular of a cultural stance as it became, especially among a group of people — young middle class whites — who had seemingly every reason to like the postwar order that had showered them with then-unheard of prosperity and freedom?
This isn’t an especially thesis-heavy book- another departure from trends in its space, and for the most part a good one. Hale takes us through various cultural manifestations of rebellion that appealed to white kids between the late forties and the early eighties: “Catcher in the Rye,” folk music, the beat poets, the new conservatism, evangelicalism both of the hippie-fied “Jesus Freak” variety and the more conservative type that the former usually congealed into anyway. In almost all instances, rebellion as an existential posture becomes detached from stable political or social meanings in all of these instances, usually well before they gain mass popularity. These things become politically polysemous, moving people left and right simultaneously in some cases, and most often depoliticizing people by upholding personal authenticity over mass confrontation of power.
So far, so good- it’s funny, in the introduction she specifically cites Tom Frank as one of the people she’s attempting to critique by making more space in her work for genuine rebelliousness of subcultures than he ever did, but several of these chapters could be Baffler articles. That said, I am getting a little tired of this mode and line of inquiry. It’s not like I’ve grown more sanguine about subcultural rebellion as a political force. I just think there’s limits to the story of the late twentieth century’s failed subcultural rebels in terms of explanatory power. But hey- I picked up this book and so knew what it was about. I just thought Hale, the well-respected academic historian, would ask more interesting and thoroughgoing questions than Frank the polemicist. She only did intermittently, and some of the answers were real head-scratchers.
Hale’s first chapter, on folk music, is probably the best, most ambitious, and most closely-argued chapter in the book. She makes some ambitious claims about the nature of performance always angling either for transformation or transcendence. Both imply an escape from self, one by temporarily becoming something else, the other by permanently escaping the plane of selfhood more generally. Heady stuff! She brings some of the cultural historical work about minstrelsy that made such a stir earlier in the millennium into the mix. Minstrelsy was about a lot of things, much of that work argued and Hale does too, but formally it was about transforming on stage, playing with identity and trying on being someone else. Mutatis mutandis, this is also what the folk revivalists of the fifties and sixties did, in Hale’s telling. In our argot, they LARPed being black bluesmen, Appalachia hill folks, rural girls moved to factory towns and singing their laments. Beats and “white negros” ala Norman Mailer did something similar- sought out a mode of rebellion through identity play. All of them, in Hale’s telling, over-complicated matters with authenticity politics — folkies looking for “the real” folk music, despite being New Yorkers with working running water — perhaps a legacy from folk revivalism’s roots in both right- and left-leaning political-cultural projects. But by the time Bob Dylan showed there was fame and money in eschewing all the authenticity stuff — that you could be “authentic” by just being yourself, however contrived that self was, i.e. started selling transcendence — the generation he spoke for was primed for the message.
I think there’s a lot of insight there. I’m also uncomfortable with the way the argument — I get the idea that a lot of arguments in this space do this — seems to relativize the dehumanizing aspects of minstrelsy while simultaneously spreading its logic across the range of pop culture history (and present). Like… blackface was fucked up. I get that it was popular and influential. I get that there’s no neat dividing line between the forms minstrelsy informed, from jazz to cartooning, and minstrelsy. I get that many pop performers, black ones included, continued, and continue, to sell an image of blackness for white consumption after blackface went out of style. But I kind of figure, you know, not painting your face and bugging your eyes out in a cruel dehumanizing parody has to be kind of an important distinction? Like, there was nothing stopping white kids from seeking that out and doing it, as indeed numerous pictures from fraternity parties will affirm, if that’s what it was all about. I think there’s enough of a difference that we can’t just port the logic over to the long history of the blues and from there to it’s fans. Among other things, it seems impossible to enjoy minstrelsy without enjoying its cruelty or partaking of its transformative elements (or more likely, both). That’s not the same with folk or blues (or hip hop, to use another music often put into the same category).
These category confusions and odd, odd conflations dog the work into later and generally less coherent chapters. They become especially tricky when we get into political organizers on both the left and the right. I get that the middle class white kids in SDS were often stupid about race and achingly naive and earnest about seeking personal meaning through community politics. But if you’re going to center your argument about the group on feelings, like the “falling in love” with a certain picture of black and/or working class authenticity that Hale had them experience (based on their letters, admittedly), you need more theoretical fuel in the tank than Hale has in order to explore what that means, otherwise you wind up with “Tom Hayden et al caught feelings, rendering their organizing invalid.” It’s pretty weird to me that she seems almost more to see William Buckley, who far and wide depicted himself as a “revolutionary” against stultifying consensus liberalism, as a more legit rebel than the SDS kids. Or rather, since it was all emotive, performative garbage, easily appropriated by either the right or the left, Buckley wins by being palpably insincere, not woundedly, childishly open and sincere but still tripping over their own dick ala Hayden or Joan Baez.
It gets extra weird when Hale tries to assign political valence, or a lack thereof, to acts of rebellion- or maybe this is just me being sensitive about depictions of Hunter S. Thompson, a writer I admire (I’m also a white blues fan, so). Hale basically tries to wedge Thompson into a Jon Stewart-era version of left-liberalism, fails due to Thompson’s sense of humor, love of guns, and lack of interest in government regulation, and thereby declares him and his rebellions as politically ambiguous. I get that right-wingers can and have admired Thompson and hijacked his work. But his own opinions were clear, and it’s anachronism to claim them for anything other than (an arguably under-theorized, homegrown version of) the left- of fighting power and distributing it downwards. He probably wasn’t the best role model as an organizer, but, and I say this as something of an organizing snob… a lot of people weren’t, back then, including organizers who became legends. And the only thing Thompson wanted to be was a writer, not an organizer.
Basically, I think my problem here is that Hale hits on close to home targets, but doesn’t really hit them that well. The blues/folk/blackface stuff is at least pretty sophisticated abd deeply read, even if I think she basically pursued a blind alley- it was a popular one, for a while, might still be around Culture Studies, if that’s still a thing (“in this economy?!”). I think she would need considerably better definitions of terms and more sensitive readings, though, to render SDS and YDF equally emotive and useless, and to make HST — a guy who shot himself to death in part because his country re-elected George W. Bush — a right-winger. I’m making this book sound like it’s awful. It’s not! Especially the stuff on folk authenticity politics and the Jesus Freak movement is pretty good, and shows a sophistication that seems to disappear in other areas. It’s odd! But I don’t know… still basically mostly good even if I disagree with it? ****
This isn’t an especially thesis-heavy book- another departure from trends in its space, and for the most part a good one. Hale takes us through various cultural manifestations of rebellion that appealed to white kids between the late forties and the early eighties: “Catcher in the Rye,” folk music, the beat poets, the new conservatism, evangelicalism both of the hippie-fied “Jesus Freak” variety and the more conservative type that the former usually congealed into anyway. In almost all instances, rebellion as an existential posture becomes detached from stable political or social meanings in all of these instances, usually well before they gain mass popularity. These things become politically polysemous, moving people left and right simultaneously in some cases, and most often depoliticizing people by upholding personal authenticity over mass confrontation of power.
So far, so good- it’s funny, in the introduction she specifically cites Tom Frank as one of the people she’s attempting to critique by making more space in her work for genuine rebelliousness of subcultures than he ever did, but several of these chapters could be Baffler articles. That said, I am getting a little tired of this mode and line of inquiry. It’s not like I’ve grown more sanguine about subcultural rebellion as a political force. I just think there’s limits to the story of the late twentieth century’s failed subcultural rebels in terms of explanatory power. But hey- I picked up this book and so knew what it was about. I just thought Hale, the well-respected academic historian, would ask more interesting and thoroughgoing questions than Frank the polemicist. She only did intermittently, and some of the answers were real head-scratchers.
Hale’s first chapter, on folk music, is probably the best, most ambitious, and most closely-argued chapter in the book. She makes some ambitious claims about the nature of performance always angling either for transformation or transcendence. Both imply an escape from self, one by temporarily becoming something else, the other by permanently escaping the plane of selfhood more generally. Heady stuff! She brings some of the cultural historical work about minstrelsy that made such a stir earlier in the millennium into the mix. Minstrelsy was about a lot of things, much of that work argued and Hale does too, but formally it was about transforming on stage, playing with identity and trying on being someone else. Mutatis mutandis, this is also what the folk revivalists of the fifties and sixties did, in Hale’s telling. In our argot, they LARPed being black bluesmen, Appalachia hill folks, rural girls moved to factory towns and singing their laments. Beats and “white negros” ala Norman Mailer did something similar- sought out a mode of rebellion through identity play. All of them, in Hale’s telling, over-complicated matters with authenticity politics — folkies looking for “the real” folk music, despite being New Yorkers with working running water — perhaps a legacy from folk revivalism’s roots in both right- and left-leaning political-cultural projects. But by the time Bob Dylan showed there was fame and money in eschewing all the authenticity stuff — that you could be “authentic” by just being yourself, however contrived that self was, i.e. started selling transcendence — the generation he spoke for was primed for the message.
I think there’s a lot of insight there. I’m also uncomfortable with the way the argument — I get the idea that a lot of arguments in this space do this — seems to relativize the dehumanizing aspects of minstrelsy while simultaneously spreading its logic across the range of pop culture history (and present). Like… blackface was fucked up. I get that it was popular and influential. I get that there’s no neat dividing line between the forms minstrelsy informed, from jazz to cartooning, and minstrelsy. I get that many pop performers, black ones included, continued, and continue, to sell an image of blackness for white consumption after blackface went out of style. But I kind of figure, you know, not painting your face and bugging your eyes out in a cruel dehumanizing parody has to be kind of an important distinction? Like, there was nothing stopping white kids from seeking that out and doing it, as indeed numerous pictures from fraternity parties will affirm, if that’s what it was all about. I think there’s enough of a difference that we can’t just port the logic over to the long history of the blues and from there to it’s fans. Among other things, it seems impossible to enjoy minstrelsy without enjoying its cruelty or partaking of its transformative elements (or more likely, both). That’s not the same with folk or blues (or hip hop, to use another music often put into the same category).
These category confusions and odd, odd conflations dog the work into later and generally less coherent chapters. They become especially tricky when we get into political organizers on both the left and the right. I get that the middle class white kids in SDS were often stupid about race and achingly naive and earnest about seeking personal meaning through community politics. But if you’re going to center your argument about the group on feelings, like the “falling in love” with a certain picture of black and/or working class authenticity that Hale had them experience (based on their letters, admittedly), you need more theoretical fuel in the tank than Hale has in order to explore what that means, otherwise you wind up with “Tom Hayden et al caught feelings, rendering their organizing invalid.” It’s pretty weird to me that she seems almost more to see William Buckley, who far and wide depicted himself as a “revolutionary” against stultifying consensus liberalism, as a more legit rebel than the SDS kids. Or rather, since it was all emotive, performative garbage, easily appropriated by either the right or the left, Buckley wins by being palpably insincere, not woundedly, childishly open and sincere but still tripping over their own dick ala Hayden or Joan Baez.
It gets extra weird when Hale tries to assign political valence, or a lack thereof, to acts of rebellion- or maybe this is just me being sensitive about depictions of Hunter S. Thompson, a writer I admire (I’m also a white blues fan, so). Hale basically tries to wedge Thompson into a Jon Stewart-era version of left-liberalism, fails due to Thompson’s sense of humor, love of guns, and lack of interest in government regulation, and thereby declares him and his rebellions as politically ambiguous. I get that right-wingers can and have admired Thompson and hijacked his work. But his own opinions were clear, and it’s anachronism to claim them for anything other than (an arguably under-theorized, homegrown version of) the left- of fighting power and distributing it downwards. He probably wasn’t the best role model as an organizer, but, and I say this as something of an organizing snob… a lot of people weren’t, back then, including organizers who became legends. And the only thing Thompson wanted to be was a writer, not an organizer.
Basically, I think my problem here is that Hale hits on close to home targets, but doesn’t really hit them that well. The blues/folk/blackface stuff is at least pretty sophisticated abd deeply read, even if I think she basically pursued a blind alley- it was a popular one, for a while, might still be around Culture Studies, if that’s still a thing (“in this economy?!”). I think she would need considerably better definitions of terms and more sensitive readings, though, to render SDS and YDF equally emotive and useless, and to make HST — a guy who shot himself to death in part because his country re-elected George W. Bush — a right-winger. I’m making this book sound like it’s awful. It’s not! Especially the stuff on folk authenticity politics and the Jesus Freak movement is pretty good, and shows a sophistication that seems to disappear in other areas. It’s odd! But I don’t know… still basically mostly good even if I disagree with it? ****
July 5, 2022
If I wanted to convince somebody that American Studies is a worthwhile field that they should consider, I would have them start with this book. Not only does it tie together a number of major topics from 20th-century American cultural and political history, but it does so with a conscious effort to avoid mythologizing or reductionism and to acknowledge historical complexity at every turn. Importantly, the writing is extremely accessible, especially by the standards of academic writing, without sacrificing any of its intellectual rigor. I will admit that some of the historical throughlines become muddied in the final chapters, and the ending was not as emphatic as I felt it could have been, but even with these flaws, it was an enlightening exploration of the formation of white middle-class romanticization of marginalized people and the concept of marginalization itself.
May 13, 2022
Grace Elizabeth Hale's "A Nation of Outsiders," lets the reader in on the general story of "outsiders" that organized during the 1960s Hippie culture. You'll read about groups that formed as activists -- SNCC, SDS, ERAP, religious fundamentalists, evangelists during the civil rights movement.
The writing is dry material (though you'd absorb new org. you most likely haven't heard of) because I felt like the author could've integrated more personalized stories to engage the reader. Personal accounts inspire readers and organizers to action.
The writing is dry material (though you'd absorb new org. you most likely haven't heard of) because I felt like the author could've integrated more personalized stories to engage the reader. Personal accounts inspire readers and organizers to action.
October 30, 2025
Very interesting
December 21, 2011
The Catcher in the Rye chapter is fantastic, and I liked the rock and roll and William Buckley, Jr. chapters. I read only parts of some of the other chapters (my dissertation only covers the 1950s), but thought they were interesting and reasonably wide-ranging. Hale's romance of the outsider concept is ridiculously relevant today.
May 17, 2012
This is an interesting look into the attractiveness of counterculturalism to the white middle class, how it formed, and how it shaped today's young adults.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews