It is possible to give an idea of the main lines, hypotheses, and style of 1960. Yet disclosing the richness and subtlety of its analyses is an arduous task within the limits of a short review. Readers will have to explore, discuss, question, and appropriate this book in their own way, everyone following one or several of the many threads that Al Filreis, director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and codirector of PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania, has gathered in this impressive study, which offers countless new perspectives on the shift from the conservative 1950s to the progressive, often radical 1960s.
The choice of 1960 as the turning point of this history of course springs immediately to mind. Cultural historians do not always have the 1960s starting in 1960. Some will go back in time and hint at the Rosa Parks bus boycott (1955), the...