Bombs, Beards, and Barricades: 150 Years of Youth in Revolt

by Anthony Esler

Written at the height of the student movement in the late 60's, this is an attempt to place it in historical perspective - topics range from student revolutionaries in Germany in 1815 to the beats in the 50's.

239 pages, Library Binding

First published July 1, 1972

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthony Esler was an American historian who became keenly interested in the 1960s counterculture. He observed it firsthand not just on university campuses, but by personally visiting such famous events as England's Aldermaston ban-the-bomb, Martin Luther King's 1963 Washington march, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention and ensuing Chicago conspiracy trial. But as a historian, Esler knew that youth discontent was nothing new, and his 1971 book Bombs Beards and Barricades aimed to show the American public that the same struggles of the beats and hippies had already played out before time and time again.

Thus each chapters of his book focuses on a different generation somewhere in the USA or Europe. The first part is titled "The Birth of the Youth Movement" and examines the German student revolts of 1815, the French wave of 1830, youth participants in the Austrian nationalist events of 1848, anarchists and nihilists in Russia in 1881. In the second part, "The Growth of the Youth Revolution", Esler's looks first at fin-de-siecle Europe, then jazz and Dada on both shores of the Atlantic, youth crusades in Europe and the USA in the 1930s, the Beats, and finally the manifold events of the 1960s up to the Weather Underground. While a firsthand observer of the 1960s youth culture, Esler's view of youth activity isn'tuniformly positive. He dedicates considerable space to youth activism for the Nazi party in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His point is that for whether ill or good, youth uprisings are simply a force of nature.

I bought the book as someone interested mainly in the 1960s counterculture. For me the most striking part of the book is how by mid-1971, when Esler finished writing, so many events of the late 1960s were already seen as ancient history, whole waves of activism and fashion had withered and gone out, and there was now a widespread belief that protest and engagement was useless 'cause mainstream society and the US government wasn't ever going to change. Of course that ties in very well with all the other histories I've read, but it's still amazing how quickly and drastically everything ended.

Decades later, is this book still worth reading? It contains a vast amount of trivia, so readers are bound to learn a lot. However, for me it is precisely that rambling display of trivia that makes the book annoying to read. Esler's style of writing is often to vividly depict the atmosphere of these times with disconnected, one-sentence-long comments. Sure, you get a feel for the atmosphere, but the in-depth analysis is missing. It is almost as if Esler were trying to survey the history of youth revolt in the same fashion that Allen Ginsberg sketched the Beat generation in "Howl" (Esler even quotes a lengthy passage of Ginsberg's poem).

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is certainly a history we dont hear about in school. If youth were to know its many revolts, there certainly might be more of it. For example, i had never heard of the zengakuren, nor of the 1815s German Student Revolt. Nor had I really ever thought of Lenin and Stalin as rebellious young or the shooter of the Archduke before WWI. His depiction of a burning barricade outside Northwestern University attempting to block Chicago traffic that morning is especially hilarious and telling. He gives history a vitality often lacking in similar work, although he's got some of the best subject matter to work with.

[Deanna Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual I couldn't put it down! Loved it!