Synopses & Reviews
On June 12, 1962, sixty young student activists drafted a manifesto for their generation--The Port Huron Statement--that ignited a decade of dissent. Democracy Is in the Streets is the definitive history of the major people and ideas that shaped the New Left in America during that turbulent decade. Because the 1960s generation is now moving into positions of power in politics, education, the media, and business, their early history is crucial to our understanding. James Miller, in his new Preface, puts the 1960s and them into a context for our time, claiming that something of value did happen: "Most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness--political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new--are with us still."
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Careful, perceptive, and elegant. -- D. K. Jamieson - Choice
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[An] excellent account...[by] an accomplished writer...Accurate, sympathetic, critical, learned...The leaders of the next [student] revolt will do well to read Mr. Miller's fine book--for inspiration, and for admonition too. New York Review of Books
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Brilliant...Original and astute...Anyone interested in American political thought will want to study this analysis. Hendrik Hertzberg - New York Times Book Review
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Excellent...well written...makes a substantial contribution to the literature on the New Left. Paul Berman - New Republic
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Careful, perceptive, and elegant. Alan Brinkley
Synopsis
On June 12, 1962, sixty young activists drafted a manifesto for their generation--The Port Huron Statement--that ignited a decade of dissent. Democracy Is in the Streets is the definitive history of the people and ideas that shaped the New Left in America during the turbulent 1960s. From the ideal of "participatory democracy" to the reality of community organizing, from the most publicized radical leaders to less well known theorists and activists, James Miller brings to life the hopes and struggles, the triumphs and tragedies, of the students and organizers who took the political vision of The Port Huron Statement to heart--and to the streets.
Synopsis
large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness--political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new--are with us still.
Synopsis
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Synopsis
Nominee, 1987 National Book Critics Circle Awards
About the Author
James Miller, Professor of Political Science and Director of Liberal Studies at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, is the author of The Passion of Michel Foucault and Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy.
Critic for Newsweek and has written for The New Republic, Rolling Stone, and New Times
Table of Contents
Preface: The 1960s in the 1990s
Introduction: Port Huron and the Lost History of the New Left
PART ONE: REDISCOVERING POLITICS
1: Out of Apathy
On a Different Track