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The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Say “the Sixties” and the images start coming, images of a time when all authority was defied and millions of young Americans thought they could change the world—either through music, drugs, and universal love or by “putting their bodies on the line” against injustice and war.
Todd Gitlin, the highly regarded writer, media critic, and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has written an authoritative and compelling account of this supercharged decade—a decade he helped shape as an early president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and an organizer of the first national demonstration against the Vietnam war. Part critical history, part personal memoir, part celebration, and part meditation, this critically acclaimed work resurrects a generation on all its glory and tragedy.
Todd Gitlin, the highly regarded writer, media critic, and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has written an authoritative and compelling account of this supercharged decade—a decade he helped shape as an early president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and an organizer of the first national demonstration against the Vietnam war. Part critical history, part personal memoir, part celebration, and part meditation, this critically acclaimed work resurrects a generation on all its glory and tragedy.
544 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Todd Gitlin
47 books51 followersTodd Gitlin was an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and not very private intellectual. He was professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
December 17, 2019
There were some great insights in this book, like when the author uses the phrase "fatally insular" to describe the student protest movement of the Sixties. And when he says the angry student radicals of the Left were as horrified and fascinated by violence as the Victorians were by sex. But this is not really a history of the Sixties. It's only a history of the student left, and it's dominated by Todd Gitlin's personal experiences, reminiscences, soul searching, etc.
And he's not always that insightful. There's a long prologue about the Fifties where he writes about rock and roll and has absolutely nothing new to say. (Elvis made black music respectable? Who knew?) And some of this personal comments are fall-down laughing funny, like when he says with a straight face that Paul Anka's "Diana" is as moving to him as "Youngblood" by the Coasters.
But for a guy who's written a very ambitious work that attempts to interpret all the hidden undercurrents of the turbulent Sixties protests, Todd Gitlin misses some very obvious issues. He goes on and on about the rage of the hardcore student left, the SDS types who wanted to blow up the squares. But he never explains why this was any different from the rage of the hardhats who wanted to beat up the hippies. Also, while he discusses all the different forms of anti-Vietnam protests, violent and non-violent, and emphasizes the role that Vietnam veterans played at certain key demonstrations, he never once acknowledges the rage the the Left directed at the soldiers as individuals. The word "pig" appears in this book many times, but not the word "baby-killer."
Now one of the most iconic images of the Sixties is that of the returning Vietnam soldier being spit on in the airport by hippies. Columnist Bob Greene wrote a whole book about this myth, called HOMECOMING. Gitlin never comments on it one way or another -- not even to deny that any such thing ever took place. He fills the book with personal asides and emotional tangents, but never mentions whether he had any high school or neighborhood friends who served in Vietnam, or how he felt about them, or how *they* felt about his radical activities. It's often said that the Vietnam War divided America, and divided families, but none of that is reflected here. Gitlin has nothing to say about Vietnam veterans as human beings, as sons, brothers, or husbands. This is very revealing but perhaps not in the way that he intended!
The hostility towards the military that defined the anti-war Left is reflected in other odd ways as well. It's to his credit that Gitlin candidly acknowledges the brutal sexism, exploitation and hypocrisy of the male SDS leadership. But he never reflects on the deeper reasons for the bullying behavior of the men in the movement. Deep down these guys knew they were cowards. They'd repudiated their masculinity (by dodging the draft) and at the same time were desperate to assert themselves in what they imagined was a "male" fashion, by bullying and insulting women.
Gitlin quotes one of the more obscure anti-war slogans, "girls say yes to boys who say no." He expresses a vague irritation at hearing this line at the peace events. And he points out, correctly, that women in the movement resented the idea of having to put out for their male comrades as an act of solidarity. But he doesn't dig into the deeper insecurities this slogan reflects. The "boys who say no" are being cast as feminine, as the weaker sex, precisely because they've repudiated violence and the call of duty in Vietnam. The resentment of women that they expressed in the process of destroying their own movement was really a sign of shame, self-doubt and self-loathing. Male anti-war protesters were in the awkward position of demanding male privileges (access to young women, attention and respect) while repudiating male responsibilities. It's a contradiction the "movement" was never able to resolve, which is why it disintegrated so quickly, and why puerile fantasies of violence became more and more marked among the leaders. But Gitlin has no clue about any of this. He's scrupulously careful to avoid this kind of analysis. He never even explains how he beat the draft!
All things considered, this is a big, impressive looking book, with some valuable history. But when it comes to analysis, there's a lot less there than meets the eye.
And he's not always that insightful. There's a long prologue about the Fifties where he writes about rock and roll and has absolutely nothing new to say. (Elvis made black music respectable? Who knew?) And some of this personal comments are fall-down laughing funny, like when he says with a straight face that Paul Anka's "Diana" is as moving to him as "Youngblood" by the Coasters.
But for a guy who's written a very ambitious work that attempts to interpret all the hidden undercurrents of the turbulent Sixties protests, Todd Gitlin misses some very obvious issues. He goes on and on about the rage of the hardcore student left, the SDS types who wanted to blow up the squares. But he never explains why this was any different from the rage of the hardhats who wanted to beat up the hippies. Also, while he discusses all the different forms of anti-Vietnam protests, violent and non-violent, and emphasizes the role that Vietnam veterans played at certain key demonstrations, he never once acknowledges the rage the the Left directed at the soldiers as individuals. The word "pig" appears in this book many times, but not the word "baby-killer."
Now one of the most iconic images of the Sixties is that of the returning Vietnam soldier being spit on in the airport by hippies. Columnist Bob Greene wrote a whole book about this myth, called HOMECOMING. Gitlin never comments on it one way or another -- not even to deny that any such thing ever took place. He fills the book with personal asides and emotional tangents, but never mentions whether he had any high school or neighborhood friends who served in Vietnam, or how he felt about them, or how *they* felt about his radical activities. It's often said that the Vietnam War divided America, and divided families, but none of that is reflected here. Gitlin has nothing to say about Vietnam veterans as human beings, as sons, brothers, or husbands. This is very revealing but perhaps not in the way that he intended!
The hostility towards the military that defined the anti-war Left is reflected in other odd ways as well. It's to his credit that Gitlin candidly acknowledges the brutal sexism, exploitation and hypocrisy of the male SDS leadership. But he never reflects on the deeper reasons for the bullying behavior of the men in the movement. Deep down these guys knew they were cowards. They'd repudiated their masculinity (by dodging the draft) and at the same time were desperate to assert themselves in what they imagined was a "male" fashion, by bullying and insulting women.
Gitlin quotes one of the more obscure anti-war slogans, "girls say yes to boys who say no." He expresses a vague irritation at hearing this line at the peace events. And he points out, correctly, that women in the movement resented the idea of having to put out for their male comrades as an act of solidarity. But he doesn't dig into the deeper insecurities this slogan reflects. The "boys who say no" are being cast as feminine, as the weaker sex, precisely because they've repudiated violence and the call of duty in Vietnam. The resentment of women that they expressed in the process of destroying their own movement was really a sign of shame, self-doubt and self-loathing. Male anti-war protesters were in the awkward position of demanding male privileges (access to young women, attention and respect) while repudiating male responsibilities. It's a contradiction the "movement" was never able to resolve, which is why it disintegrated so quickly, and why puerile fantasies of violence became more and more marked among the leaders. But Gitlin has no clue about any of this. He's scrupulously careful to avoid this kind of analysis. He never even explains how he beat the draft!
All things considered, this is a big, impressive looking book, with some valuable history. But when it comes to analysis, there's a lot less there than meets the eye.
May 19, 2012
Fascinating memoir of Todd Gitlin's journey through the radical movements of the 1960s. I especially appreciated the detail about the very early period, late 50s and early 60s, which are often disregarded in popular treatments of the era. Gitlin's writing is very literary/academic in style, and is consistent with a lot of other writing from the 1960s, something that I think many people would be surprised by. The driving personalities of that time were college students and extremely intelligent young adults, and they tended to be both extreme and intellectual at the same time, heavy readers of dense political material and endless debaters. This is a stark difference from the current trend to not read at all and think in highly simplistic and "dumbed down" terms.
I'd give this work five stars except that it's a bit over-written; Gitlin, who reports being a veteran of many meetings that literally ran for days without stopping, tends to analyze and pontificate a bit more than he needs to. But his personal familiarity with exactly what went on in the radical movement, how the people involved thought about the world and where they came from is priceless. I hadn't realized how much was contributed by "red diaper babies:" adult children of the previous generation of radical leftists. I only regret that Gitlin was not able to give us the same direct insight into the Weather Underground--he was left behind when that group hived off from SDS.
I'd give this work five stars except that it's a bit over-written; Gitlin, who reports being a veteran of many meetings that literally ran for days without stopping, tends to analyze and pontificate a bit more than he needs to. But his personal familiarity with exactly what went on in the radical movement, how the people involved thought about the world and where they came from is priceless. I hadn't realized how much was contributed by "red diaper babies:" adult children of the previous generation of radical leftists. I only regret that Gitlin was not able to give us the same direct insight into the Weather Underground--he was left behind when that group hived off from SDS.
November 16, 2012
I don't often write negative things about books, since even the worst among them generally has some useful ideas or at least expands your mind by challenging a firmly-held opinion. Unfortunately I cannot in good faith say any of these things about Todd Gitlin.
Gitlin's writings are so pernicious precisely because they lull you into a false sense of intellectual security; Gitlin's book has about as much use for serious historians and activists as the movie Forrest Gump. It's rare indeed that a book can be trenchantly criticized both from the left and the right, however, two authors do just that to Gitlin's Years of Hope, Days of Rage and to much greater effect than the original.
Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air traces the revolutionary currents of the 1960s through the 1970s and 1980s in an intelligent fashion, while criticizing Gitlin's simplistic and omission-laded "Good Sixties vs Bad Sixties" narrative. From a different angle, Eric Leif Davin's under-appreciated Radicals in Power: The New Left Experience in Office challenges Gitlin's thesis as well, taking the author on for deliberately ignoring Leftist involvement in grassroots electoral campaigns and "perpetuating the myth" that the New Left effectively sputtered out in the 1960s. This is to say nothing of Kirkpatrick Sale's far superior 1973 treatise on SDS, which has held up well over the years and still far outshines Years of Hope, Days of Rage as a history of that organization.
Ultimately, Gitlin's disingenuous nattering, both in his books and in his remarks to the press, is so discouraging because it reflects poorly on historians and activists of real principle and substance. My sentiments are perhaps best summed up by Bhaskar Sunkara, who mentions Gitlin's latest opportunist scheme: a book on the recent Occupy Wall Street upheavals. "It pained me to see aging mediocrities like Todd Gitlin, who were hardly even observers of the [Occupy] protests, cash in through lucrative book deals, while others worked tirelessly sustaining the movement." My only quibble with Sunkara's analysis would be that calling Gitlin a mediocrity is a disservice to aging mediocrities of integrity and good will the world over.
Gitlin's writings are so pernicious precisely because they lull you into a false sense of intellectual security; Gitlin's book has about as much use for serious historians and activists as the movie Forrest Gump. It's rare indeed that a book can be trenchantly criticized both from the left and the right, however, two authors do just that to Gitlin's Years of Hope, Days of Rage and to much greater effect than the original.
Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air traces the revolutionary currents of the 1960s through the 1970s and 1980s in an intelligent fashion, while criticizing Gitlin's simplistic and omission-laded "Good Sixties vs Bad Sixties" narrative. From a different angle, Eric Leif Davin's under-appreciated Radicals in Power: The New Left Experience in Office challenges Gitlin's thesis as well, taking the author on for deliberately ignoring Leftist involvement in grassroots electoral campaigns and "perpetuating the myth" that the New Left effectively sputtered out in the 1960s. This is to say nothing of Kirkpatrick Sale's far superior 1973 treatise on SDS, which has held up well over the years and still far outshines Years of Hope, Days of Rage as a history of that organization.
Ultimately, Gitlin's disingenuous nattering, both in his books and in his remarks to the press, is so discouraging because it reflects poorly on historians and activists of real principle and substance. My sentiments are perhaps best summed up by Bhaskar Sunkara, who mentions Gitlin's latest opportunist scheme: a book on the recent Occupy Wall Street upheavals. "It pained me to see aging mediocrities like Todd Gitlin, who were hardly even observers of the [Occupy] protests, cash in through lucrative book deals, while others worked tirelessly sustaining the movement." My only quibble with Sunkara's analysis would be that calling Gitlin a mediocrity is a disservice to aging mediocrities of integrity and good will the world over.
February 24, 2014
Addendum to the review that follows: I managed to forget one of the things that irritated me most about the book, which is that Gitlin pays almost no attention to Vietnam veterans, who make their appearance only very late. A clear reflection of his, and the New Left's, insular qualities. I've changed my mind and am reducing the rating to two stars after fall.
Very difficult book for me to evaluate with anything resembling "fairness," which is appropriate for a book that looks at the 1960s from the perspective of the "New Left." Gitlin's a bit older than I am and he was firmly committed to Students for a Democratic Society during its early, philosophically serious phase. He sees people of my age who were grounded in the "Counterculture" as signs of the collapse of everything he valued and hoped for. To complicate matters further I'm in the beginning stages of writing a book about the Sixties that, inshallah, will cover some of the turf that Gitlin ignores and view most of the turf he does cover from a very different angle. All that by way of saying that the comments below reflect a very particular set of arguments. (The three stars is a compromise--part of me wanted to give it a two to highlight the problems; the part of me that values sources giving deep insight into part of the story told me to give it a four. In no way is it actually a "three star" book.)
Okay, the problems. My intellectual and activist foundation is in African American Studies and, once the story moves beyond Freedom Summer, Gitlin's flat-out awful on race. He reduces Black Power to the Panthers and a sort of exclusionary black nationalism that was highly visible, but nothing resembling the full story. He just doesn't have much nuance on where civil rights came from and he knows next to nothing about the complexity of the South. The book does a great job reflecting the white left's confusion, but he misses a whole lot. (He even fails to acknowledge that Stokely Carmichael's line about the position of women in the revolution being "prone" was said in jest.) Second, his chapter on women is embarrassing. He begins by patting himself and the New Left on the back for their egalitarianism and for taking women seriously. Then he presents some of the evidence that demonstrates the depth and breadth of women's dissatisfaction with the left. He sort of knows this, but can't quite bring himself to admit how bad the problems were. More importantly, Gitlin pays attention to women *only* when they're involved with left politics. The Sixties is a boy's tale in ways that aren't inevitable. For instance, he says nothing at all about women on the right. That ties in with yet another problem, which is that Gitlin reduces his portrayal of the right to the standard series of cartoon villains: Goldwater, Nixon, Agnew, Reagan. If the book's actually what it claims to be, the right is a much much bigger part of the story.
Even as a history of "the movement," I find Gitlin unsatisfactory. He draws a strict line between the serious thinkers and activists of the New Left and the self-indulgent fuzzy-thinking hippies of the counterculture. For me, that was much more complicated. Part of that's regional. Gitlin's Harvard roots reveal themselves regularly. He sees the arrival of midwesterners (by which he basically means people from the Great Lakes region) in SDS as the beginning of the end. He takes the elite Ivy League schools, Michigan and Berkeley seriously with brief nods to Madison, Kansas and Austin. But his "New Left" is essentially a group of insiders who talked with, worked with, and often slept with one another. The fact that they thought that they were the big story is part of why their version of the movement didn't work. At times, Gitlin's reports on the sectarianism and ideological debates within the New Left became as difficult to slog through as the speeches were to listen to back in the day.
My final complaint is that Gitlin's taste in music is really narrow in ways that aren't trivial. There's one passing mention of Aretha Franklin in the book, none of James Brown. I only remember a single mention of Motown, none of Curtis Mayfield. Because he's committed to the tragic narrative of the New Left, he can't hear the political anger in Creedence (who he blows off as part of music's retreat in the 1970s). This isn't just a music-lover's complaint. Music was central to every part of the 60s I lived through. Where I was--editing an underground newspaper and playing (very bad) organ in a rock band in Colorado--the Counterculture wasn't an apolitical withdrawal and music was the point of connection.
While all that's true, there's a sense in which The Sixties is irreplaceable. If what you want is a book that reflects on the decade from the perspective of a very thoughtful participant, it's hard to imagine better. Gitlin acknowledges his position in the debates and arguments; if he doesn't resolve the contradictions around race and gender, he at least knows they're there. I learned a ton about the maneuvering that surrounded events like the Freedom Summer and Chicago.
Very difficult book for me to evaluate with anything resembling "fairness," which is appropriate for a book that looks at the 1960s from the perspective of the "New Left." Gitlin's a bit older than I am and he was firmly committed to Students for a Democratic Society during its early, philosophically serious phase. He sees people of my age who were grounded in the "Counterculture" as signs of the collapse of everything he valued and hoped for. To complicate matters further I'm in the beginning stages of writing a book about the Sixties that, inshallah, will cover some of the turf that Gitlin ignores and view most of the turf he does cover from a very different angle. All that by way of saying that the comments below reflect a very particular set of arguments. (The three stars is a compromise--part of me wanted to give it a two to highlight the problems; the part of me that values sources giving deep insight into part of the story told me to give it a four. In no way is it actually a "three star" book.)
Okay, the problems. My intellectual and activist foundation is in African American Studies and, once the story moves beyond Freedom Summer, Gitlin's flat-out awful on race. He reduces Black Power to the Panthers and a sort of exclusionary black nationalism that was highly visible, but nothing resembling the full story. He just doesn't have much nuance on where civil rights came from and he knows next to nothing about the complexity of the South. The book does a great job reflecting the white left's confusion, but he misses a whole lot. (He even fails to acknowledge that Stokely Carmichael's line about the position of women in the revolution being "prone" was said in jest.) Second, his chapter on women is embarrassing. He begins by patting himself and the New Left on the back for their egalitarianism and for taking women seriously. Then he presents some of the evidence that demonstrates the depth and breadth of women's dissatisfaction with the left. He sort of knows this, but can't quite bring himself to admit how bad the problems were. More importantly, Gitlin pays attention to women *only* when they're involved with left politics. The Sixties is a boy's tale in ways that aren't inevitable. For instance, he says nothing at all about women on the right. That ties in with yet another problem, which is that Gitlin reduces his portrayal of the right to the standard series of cartoon villains: Goldwater, Nixon, Agnew, Reagan. If the book's actually what it claims to be, the right is a much much bigger part of the story.
Even as a history of "the movement," I find Gitlin unsatisfactory. He draws a strict line between the serious thinkers and activists of the New Left and the self-indulgent fuzzy-thinking hippies of the counterculture. For me, that was much more complicated. Part of that's regional. Gitlin's Harvard roots reveal themselves regularly. He sees the arrival of midwesterners (by which he basically means people from the Great Lakes region) in SDS as the beginning of the end. He takes the elite Ivy League schools, Michigan and Berkeley seriously with brief nods to Madison, Kansas and Austin. But his "New Left" is essentially a group of insiders who talked with, worked with, and often slept with one another. The fact that they thought that they were the big story is part of why their version of the movement didn't work. At times, Gitlin's reports on the sectarianism and ideological debates within the New Left became as difficult to slog through as the speeches were to listen to back in the day.
My final complaint is that Gitlin's taste in music is really narrow in ways that aren't trivial. There's one passing mention of Aretha Franklin in the book, none of James Brown. I only remember a single mention of Motown, none of Curtis Mayfield. Because he's committed to the tragic narrative of the New Left, he can't hear the political anger in Creedence (who he blows off as part of music's retreat in the 1970s). This isn't just a music-lover's complaint. Music was central to every part of the 60s I lived through. Where I was--editing an underground newspaper and playing (very bad) organ in a rock band in Colorado--the Counterculture wasn't an apolitical withdrawal and music was the point of connection.
While all that's true, there's a sense in which The Sixties is irreplaceable. If what you want is a book that reflects on the decade from the perspective of a very thoughtful participant, it's hard to imagine better. Gitlin acknowledges his position in the debates and arguments; if he doesn't resolve the contradictions around race and gender, he at least knows they're there. I learned a ton about the maneuvering that surrounded events like the Freedom Summer and Chicago.
October 5, 2017
If nothing else, Todd Gitlin's The Sixties encapsulates the canned, commonplace Boomer historiography which still dominates our discourse about the age of LBJ and Civil Rights, Nixon and Vietnam, activism and backlash. It's alternately insightful and shallow, complex and simplistic, self-effacing and egotistical. In his youth, Gitlin co-founded the Students for a Democratic Society, and it's little surprise that the book's most compelling passages focus on Gitlin's activities shaping the New Left into a viable force for radical protest against postwar America's inequities. He's also quite good showing the Movement's eventual failure, degenerating into self-defeating debates over ideology and tactics as the body politic moved on. Were this a mere memoir this would be fine, but Gitlin tries telling a comprehensive account of the decade which birthed SDS, resorting to condescension and stereotypes of anyone outside his immediate ken. Thus the portrait of liberals as duplicitous wimps, cartoon depictions of black radicals and feminists (especially the latter, as he struggles to square a view of women as rightly aggrieved, yet selfish in seeking change outside the Movement), and God help anyone identifying as a conservative or even worse, a moderate, at Gitlin's hand. Along with sophomoric cultural criticism which largely consists of listing song and movie titles, along with witless musings about drug culture and free love, and this book amounts to a decidedly mixed, self-important bag.
November 20, 2018
When I ordered this book, I had expected to enjoy it or at least find common points of reference (I am of an age!). Then, when it arrived and I saw the size of it, I decided I would have to skim read and focus just on those sections that most grabbed my attention or accorded with my own experiences. In the end, I was hooked and read the whole of the 220K+ words.
Gitlin hones beautiful sentences and maintains this style throughout his detailed history of the politics of 'the Left' and the 'counterculture' through the tumultuous sixties. As an early president of 'Students for a Democratic Society', he is well-placed for this role.
The struggle for racial desegregation in southern states of the US and the growth of the anti-Vietnam War movement dominate the first half of the book while the latter part details the splintering of these into various competing and sometimes mutually-antagonistic factions. Gitlin skillfully weaves elements of memoir and personal recollection into this huge history and does not disguise his own despair at the growth of violence and nihilism at the end of the 'Sixties Dream'. He does, however, finish (the book was first published in 1987) with the enduring achievements of this much-discussed decade - the women's movement, environmentalism and gay rights.
My non-fiction read of the year (so far!)
Gitlin hones beautiful sentences and maintains this style throughout his detailed history of the politics of 'the Left' and the 'counterculture' through the tumultuous sixties. As an early president of 'Students for a Democratic Society', he is well-placed for this role.
The struggle for racial desegregation in southern states of the US and the growth of the anti-Vietnam War movement dominate the first half of the book while the latter part details the splintering of these into various competing and sometimes mutually-antagonistic factions. Gitlin skillfully weaves elements of memoir and personal recollection into this huge history and does not disguise his own despair at the growth of violence and nihilism at the end of the 'Sixties Dream'. He does, however, finish (the book was first published in 1987) with the enduring achievements of this much-discussed decade - the women's movement, environmentalism and gay rights.
My non-fiction read of the year (so far!)
November 16, 2010
In true 60's tradition, I don't remember much about this book, but I do remember that I finished it, I enjoyed it, and it taught me the phrase "red diaper baby."
September 7, 2018
Only a sociologist could make interesting material boring.
June 11, 2013
While I was growing up Dad subscribed to Consumer Reports. Well, he didn't actually subscribe. He actually would sell ten subscriptions a year, mostly to colleagues at work, then get his subscription for free. In bad years he'd buy gift subscriptions for friends and family in order to get his "free" one.
I was introduced to The Guardian, an independent radical newsweekly which published from 1947 through 1992, in high school. In college, it being my favorite leftist rag, I got my own "free" copy by selling a bundle of maybe a hundred of the things every week. This was accomplished by standing nightly at the line leading to the south campus refectory, cajoling my fellow students to purchase copies while keeping half an eye on the ABC-TV News in the lounge. Sales would start at something like a quarter, then go down to a dime as I tried to unload the last few items. Somehow, I always managed--quite an accomplishment given that Grinnell had no more than 1200 students.
I kept up with The Guardian after college, subscribing to it until it folded. They were, in fact, my primary source for regular news about events in the Third World. It was in The Guardian that I first read about Gitlin's insider's view of the political side of the sixties. It was because of its recommendation that I bought the thing used and ultimately read it.
I was introduced to The Guardian, an independent radical newsweekly which published from 1947 through 1992, in high school. In college, it being my favorite leftist rag, I got my own "free" copy by selling a bundle of maybe a hundred of the things every week. This was accomplished by standing nightly at the line leading to the south campus refectory, cajoling my fellow students to purchase copies while keeping half an eye on the ABC-TV News in the lounge. Sales would start at something like a quarter, then go down to a dime as I tried to unload the last few items. Somehow, I always managed--quite an accomplishment given that Grinnell had no more than 1200 students.
I kept up with The Guardian after college, subscribing to it until it folded. They were, in fact, my primary source for regular news about events in the Third World. It was in The Guardian that I first read about Gitlin's insider's view of the political side of the sixties. It was because of its recommendation that I bought the thing used and ultimately read it.
November 25, 2018
Gitlin's focus here is the student protest movement and how it splintered, rather than a '60s overview. Well written, informative, surprising at times (the Kennedy brothers weren't well regarded by activists), but too dense in its details of the movement for the casual reader.
September 16, 2025
long winded but informative
Read
November 23, 2019For anyone who grew up during the sixties, this is a must read.
I was only a boy, born in 1963, but having parents of this generation, and having lived in the San Francisco Bay area during these times, I still feel the era had a strong influence on my life.
A great read about the politics of the time.
I was only a boy, born in 1963, but having parents of this generation, and having lived in the San Francisco Bay area during these times, I still feel the era had a strong influence on my life.
A great read about the politics of the time.
November 13, 2015
The Sixties were like another world. They seem so far in the past, like my youth. I am familiar with the politics and interpersonal dynamics of the New Left groups and author Todd Gitlin mentions nothing that seemed jarring to my memory. Opposition to the war in Vietnam virtually exploded in a paroxysm of anger and disillusionment. Then the focus seemed to shift to anti imperialism, anti Americanism, and misplaced admiration for international revolutionary movements. Looking back, it seems odd that a group of educated, privileged young people should end up wishing to destroy the society that engendered their good fortune. When you add the counter culture to the mix of rebellion, the sixties were a one time explosion of color and passion.
April 6, 2020
I grew up in the sixties, a few years too young to actually take part but I remember the news with the war and the riots. The music, the hippies and the drugs. This book is written by someone who lived it The take is different that what I heard from Huntley and Brinkley over supper. It has given me a new insight and something to think about.. Glad I decided to read this.
June 3, 2025
I went into this book - a retrospective memoir from Todd Gitlin, onetime president of Students for a Democratic Society who helped organize the 1965 March on Washington (not the one you're thinking of) - hoping at the very least that I could take something useful away from the successes and failures of the sixties counterculture, some insight into why it collapsed and died so spectacularly and what might be done here and now to prevent similar efforts from reaching similar results. I got to the end genuinely wondering if Gitlin actually cared for the people leftist activists try to advocate for - or if he genuinely saw them as equals in any significant way. This is very much the narrative of a white middle-class university man - and it certainly offers some insights into why that demographic turned away from the necessary fights and collapsed into egotistical navel-gazing and trendy spiritualism as a replacement for genuinely constructive introspection time and time again. I'll admit, I didn't expect much from a man who spent his final years defending a genocidal ethnostate from the BDS boycott movement, supported the invasion of Afghanistan and, as early as 1973, openly claimed to have "no feel" for the anti-war movement. I feel like there's a good reason this book is cited only in passing on the Wikipedia page for SDS (not even given the cornerstone respect of Harvey Pekar's graphic novel history of the organization). However, if it is indicative of how they functioned, this book is damning. Gitlin seems to only have respect for the people SDS organized on behalf of when they were passive recipients of upper-class largesse - when they actually began organizing for themselves, things get Complicated and very concerningly dismissive. The working class are a lost cause - university students simply can't lower themselves to the base level of factory workers or possibly relate to them on an interpersonal level. Why bother reaching out? (Obviously, those are the only kinds of working class people in America.) He rightfully criticizes the new left for having painfully naive ideas of the country outside of their campus grounds - but I'm genuinely unsure, even after all this, if he realizes that he also seems to view everyone outside of academia in only two dimensions. The Black Panthers' community outreach programs are nowhere to be seen - as far as Gitlin is concerned, all they ever did was tote around guns, disparage women in speeches and - in a particularly telling opinion - passively receive all their political views and philosophies from white leftist activists. He acknowledges the chauvinism inherent within the movement that alienated women from it - yet despite mentioning how the devaluing of women and dismissal of their contributions effectively killed the movement's efficacy once they separated and fought for themselves (since none of the men seemed to be willing to fight for them and the women were the unsung backbone that allowed literally anything to get done), he blithely moves along without really interrogating the chauvinist aspects of himself that aided in that fall (and in fact, seems to dismiss the very idea of introspection as inherently useless and jokes about his men's therapy group devolving into proto-MRA airings of grievances with the opposite sex). He acknowledges that the power of countercultural activism continued through the women's rights movement, yet when the fight for their rights got into full swing, he was on the sidelines licking his wounds and considering leftist politics as a whole to be a lost cause. No wonder they went separatist. Still, as a personal narrative of a typical liberal who considered himself a leftist traveling through the counterculture, it does contain a good deal of valuable insight into the high-minded solipsism that kneecapped the student movement. But as a history of leftist activism in the 60s, it feels half-baked - like a draft on the way to something interesting that just didn't do the work to flesh out any of its ideas. It's a decent second draft. I'd say "maybe that's the most fitting way for someone stuck within this maelstrom to relay their experiences of it" but others have done far better with the same material. You're supposed to be a sociologist, Gitlin, come on. Have some insight into the human condition. This is a book by a career academic first and a committed activist as a guilty afterthought. Pick out any given paragraph and that much is painfully obvious. There are valuable insights in this book - as polemic as I am with my dismissal of its author, he does flit on some fairly good points - but they're ones that have been made more concisely and with far less amateur poetic fluff by many, many others.
March 17, 2021
This book entails a highly insightful analysis of what formed the various zeitgeists of the sixties and is a subjective historical account of the era. I enjoyed Gitlin's personal account of his own experiences as a politically involved college student adolescent growing into a young adult pseudo hippie absorbing the culture of the era without constraint. The biggest issue with this book for me was the redundancy of Gitlin's sociological analysis. Many of the chapters rambled on with unnecessary analysis of random specific and biased events that provided less and less interesting insights. Many of the sociological concepts derived from such analysis were the same throughout the book, and the further the reader got in the mine, the less gold there was to find. philosophically, I understood the youth culture of the sixties sociological developments thoroughly a little more than half way through, and found no purpose to continue absorbing random historical facts. The book was more of a memoir that was painfully repetitive. With that being said, my favorite part of the book was Gitlin's analysis on the sociological and political changes of the first half of the 20th century leading into the developments of the sixties. I found this part of book to be the most interesting and insightful. However such insights became redundant once Gitlin consistently began writing about the 60s as most of the sociological analysis was already thoroughly conveyed by that point. Suffice to say, This book isn't bad, and definitely not a waste of time. I would simply advise to tread carefully and don't allow yourself to get lost in the mush of historical redundancy this book turns into. If you're interested in the sociological theory this book has to offer read the first half and cut yourself off when things begin to feel redundant.
March 21, 2018
No book cannot synthesize all elements of the U.S. in the the 1960s, but this monumental volume mounts a valiant effort. It's a stunning mix of social, cultural, and political history, combined with the autobiography of the onetime president of Students for a Democratic Society. Student protests form the narrative throughline of the book, although Gitlin shows direct action in many segments of society, from Mississippi Freedom Democrats to Haight-Ashbury performance artists. Gitlin calls the 1960s an unfinished Reformation — unfinished in the sense that the young protesters of the New Left failed to completely remake the world. Yes, this is a book that sympathizes with the political left and some form of Marxist or socialist worldview. Conservatives might call the 1960s an unfinished Reformation, too, but not for the reasons Gitlin does. Gitlin's fourfold thesis — that the 1960s' biggest legacies were in social equality, new lifestyles, world peace and conservation, and democratic action — is an effective way to gauge the mixture of progress, regress, and bad luck that characterized the 1960s. I don't agree with all of Gitlin's points, but I respect the fact that he lived through the 1960s, yet was able to write such a critically informed and nuanced history.
July 16, 2023
Todd Gitlin's The Sixties comes as close to diagnosing why the decade failed in the U.S. as anything else I've read. An early participant in Students for the Democratic Society (SDS), he had an insider's view of the left's historical penchant to balkanize and split into factions as SDS did, morphing into the Weathermen, building bombs. They were chased out of white working class neighborhoods when they tried to organize. Apparently, it's more important that your "line" be correct than that you win. It seems obvious to say now that building a political movement around students might not be the most strategic move; they go home for summer break. Even Gitlin's early SDS with its decentralized, townhall-style democracy doesn't provide one with access to the institutional halls of power. The generational split between SCLC and SNCC fractured the once-multiracial civil rights movement as Black Power came to the fore. Had RFK and Gene McCarthy supporters turned out to vote for Humphrey in 1968, Gitlin theorizes, things may have been different. But this is perfect hindsight. We live the consequences.
April 3, 2024
Much like I think the new left felt at the end of the sixties, I am left exhausted and jaded after reading this book. dense, expansive, and overwhelming, Todd Gitlin paints a broad stroke over one of the most revolutionary times in America. But in painting that broad stroke, I think a lot gets lost in the pages. although, I'm not sure how many pages are needed to capture this tumultuous time in our history.
American youth remains restless and angry for change, not just in policy but in the attitudes of our leaders that time and time again, continue to fail us in the long run. Older generations berate us for being too sensitive and complaining all the time but yet, we're still in unnecessary wars, women are losing their bodily autonomy, minorities continue to be brutalized in the streets by our so-called protectors, and we have politicians in office that got their start in the sixties. So much has changed in sixty years but yet so little all at the same time. Perhaps we never truly left the sixties.
"To be young and American is to have been betrayed; to be alive is to be enraged."
American youth remains restless and angry for change, not just in policy but in the attitudes of our leaders that time and time again, continue to fail us in the long run. Older generations berate us for being too sensitive and complaining all the time but yet, we're still in unnecessary wars, women are losing their bodily autonomy, minorities continue to be brutalized in the streets by our so-called protectors, and we have politicians in office that got their start in the sixties. So much has changed in sixty years but yet so little all at the same time. Perhaps we never truly left the sixties.
"To be young and American is to have been betrayed; to be alive is to be enraged."
November 13, 2022
Although I learned a lot, it wasn't the book I expected; it was as much a chronicle of left-leaning/radical groups as it was the events of the sixties. Also, I can nearly always adapt my mind to a writer's style -- not so here. For me, it felt as if it was written for one of Gitlin's colleagues from that time, someone who more or less went through what Gitlin did. It was a breezy style that never felt as if he gave a rat's ass about whether it was clear for the reader. I felt the diction was often strange, the writing esoteric.
March 7, 2019
Because of Gitlin's deep involvement in SDS, this is the most personal of the major books about the Movement. I made lots of comments in the margin, often arguing with his conclusions, which is a good sign of how he engaged me. I was quite moved by his concluding sentence: "'It was not granted you to complete the task,' said Rabbi Tarfon nineteen hundred years ago, 'and yet you may not give it up.'" We need to keep on resisting, hoping, and dreaming.
February 11, 2024
Combination memoir/history of SDS and the 60s, though as someone who has been studying the older folks in the antiwar movement, a lot of the arguments here don't necessarily hold a great deal of sway for me, but useful as a lens for understanding the youth movement and how it felt from the inside (at least for Gitlin).
February 20, 2024
Gitlin’s portrayals and depictions are not incredibly nuanced—especially for the INCREDIBLY nuanced ‘60s—although still thoughtful and descriptive. I enjoyed this work, I enjoyed Gitlin’s language, although that may simply be because I am obsessed with the 1960s.
September 27, 2019
Almost too detailed, but an insightful look into the leftist movement(s) of the sixties, including the origins from the fifties.
April 16, 2022
Obviously, as is indicated not least by the cover image, this is one of the many instances in which Goodreads has an incorrect title or subtitle.
July 30, 2022
There was a lot in here about the internal politics of the Left that I was not particularly interested in reading about.
April 16, 2024
Self-indulgent and disillusioned (sometimes inadvertently revisonist) account of some episodes in a tumulatuous decade.
June 4, 2024
2.5 rounded up
September 10, 2024
Detailed analysis of political left's churning decade of protest activism.
October 10, 2024
I love non-fiction, history, and biographies, this was terrible. It is not a history of the 60s, this is the autobiography of the author. The first 88 pages are about the 50s, and the entire book is about radical, leftist, fringe minority groups like the SDS.
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