Synopses & Reviews
The turbulent 1960s, almost from its outset, produced a dizzying display of cultural images and ideas that were as colorful as the psychedelic T-shirts that became part of its iconography. It was not, however, until Morris Dickstein's landmark Gates of Eden (1977) that we began to grasp the impact of this raucous decade in American history as a momentous cultural epoch in its own right, as significant as Belle Époque Paris or Weimar Germany. From Ginsberg and Dylan to Vonnegut and Heller, this "vital and important book" (Richard Poirier) brilliantly re-creates not only the intellectual and political ferment of the decade but also its disillusionment. What results is an inestimable contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century American culture.
Review
"Dickstein's study effectively carries us back to those times when we really believed that protest might stop a horrific war...[T]he best book on that exhilarating, depressing decade." New York Times Book Review, front-page review
Review
"The autobiographical narrative alone would commend to anyone who wants to know what really happened in a period around which clouds of myth and obfuscation are already beginning to gather." Christopher Lasch
Synopsis
Widely admired as the definitive cultural history of the 1960s, this groundbreaking work
About the Author
Morris Dickstein is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of Dancing in the Dark, an award-winning cultural history of the Great Depression, and Why Not Say What Happened, a memoir. He lives in New York City