A Fiction of the Past
The Sixties in American History
Chapter One
Problems in Making Sense
of the Sixties
[O]ur national life has been a running argument about, and with,
the sixties.
George F. Will, Forward, Reassessing the Sixties
The inclination of Americans to expect and accept change is perhaps their
most commonly shared national trait. But no one old enough to vote or understand
the issues debated by John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon during the
presidential campaign of 1960 could have dreamed how profoundly and unalterably
their society would change over the next ten years. Or how deeply distressing
those changes would be to so many of them. The assumptions that shaped some
of their most valued, fragile or problematic relationships—those between women
and men, children and parents, students and teachers, citizens and political leaders,
black people ... read full excerpt from Fiction of the Past ebook
