Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Edward H. Tihen Historical Publications Award from the Kansas State Historical Society
Communities across America were thrown into upheaval during the 1960s, when thousands of young people began to publicly question the status quo. Grassroots social movements sprung up on hundreds of college campuses and often spread to surrounding towns, where participants debated race, the role of government, Vietnam, feminism, the cold war, and other issues of the day. Yet this dynamic did not occur in a vacuum: Americans that supported the status quo came together to oppose the activists, and joined a national debate on the meaning of citizenship and patriotism. Rusty L. Monhollon uncovers the voices of ordinary people on all sides of the political spectrum in the university town of Lawrence, Kansas. He reveals how Americans from a range of ideological and political perspectives responded to and tried to resolve political and social conflict in the 1960s. By focusing on a single community, Monhollon vividly demonstrates that the war at home reached deep into the nation's core, and affected the lives of ordinary citizens on a daily basis.
Review
"...a terrific book that strips away cliches about the Decade of Unrest to provide a truer portrait of a troubled time." --
Kansas City Star"In his significant new book, This is America: The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas, Rusty Monhollon...tells that story in arresting detail an reminds us that the 1960s happened with great ferocity in places other than the Deep South and Berkeley, California." --Chicago Tribune
"Richly detailed and well written...an excellent account of how a Midwestern town was affected by a troubled period in American history."--Library Journal
Synopsis
Communities across America were thrown into upheaval during the 1960s, when thousands of young people began to publicly question the status quo, particularly in terms of race, youth, and gender. As grassroots social movements sprung up on college campuses (and often spread to surrounding towns) where participants debated race, the role of government, Vietnam, feminism, the Cold War, and other issues of the day, Americans that supported the status quo joined forces to oppose the activists and lend their own voices to the debate on the meaning of citizenship and patriotism. Monhollon uncovers the voices of ordinary people on all sides of the political spectrum in the university town of Lawrence, Kansas, and reveals how Americans from a range of ideological and political perspectives responded to and tried to resolve political and social conflict in the 1960s.
About the Author
Rusty L. Monhollon is an assistant professor of history at Hood College.
Table of Contents
The Homestead of the Free * Kansas Must Declare War * The Right to These Things * The Proper Sense of Values * Our Way of Life * The American Way * This is America? This is Kansas? This is Lawrence? * This Town Will Blow Away * Finally We Were Doing Something * Epilogue