A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History

Few events during the sixties took Americans more by surprise than the rebellion of those who were young, white, and college-educated. Dominick Cavallo pushes past the myth, disdain, and nostalgia shrouding the radical youth culture to explore how the furiously chaotic sixties sprang from the comparatively placid forties and fifties. What were the historical precedents of the political ideas advanced by Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student group in American history? Where does the hippie counterculture fit into the broad sweep of American culture and history? How does the artistic output of people like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin correspond to artists of the past like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau? A Fiction of the Past not only connects sixties youth culture to American history, but shows how its most radical ideas and values were deeply etched in the American soul. A thrilling and important new book about a most contentious time.