“Ward has crafted a cool, clever, and incisive Sixties reader. . . . Pedagogically sophisticated and thought-provoking, this reader gives instructors an invaluable tool as it gives students a wide-ranging tour of Sixties politics and culture.”
David Farber, Temple University, author of The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s "With his thoughtful introduction and excellent selection of documents, Brian Ward has done an outstanding job of bringing to life the complexities and contradictions of the era."
Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton University, author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
“Ward recaptures much of the variety, vitality, and energy of the 1960s. . . . Taken together these documents bring back the sometimes raucous, mostly contentious, but never dull era we call the 60s. Ward’s fine and incisive introduction puts the discordant parts into a coherent context.”
Mark Lytle, Bard College, author of America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon
“This brilliant collage of political and cultural documents brings the 1960s back to life as presidents, activists, musicians, and social critics from the left and right offer competing visions of national purpose and American identity. An extraordinary teaching resource.”
Matthew D. Lassiter, University of Michigan, author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South
From the Inside Flap
Drawn from a wide range of perspectives and showcasing a variety of primary source materials, Brian Ward’s The 1960s: A Documentary Reader includes over 50 primary documents and highlights the most important themes of the era. Cumulatively, the speeches, court decisions, acts of Congress, secret memos, song lyrics, cartoons, photographs, news reports, advertisements, and first-hand testimony collected in this reader take students from the New Left to the New Right, from Vietnam to Woodstock, from suburbia to the moon, and from evangelicals to environmentalists. With headnotes that place each text into historical context and an introduction that examines the difficulties historians face when confronted with an abundance of diverse, often contradictory, evidence, The 1960s offers students a sophisticated introduction to this most beguiling yet elusive of decades.
From the Back Cover
Drawn from a wide range of perspectives and showcasing a variety of primary source materials, Brian Ward’s The 1960s: A Documentary Reader includes over 50 primary documents and highlights the most important themes of the era. Cumulatively, the speeches, court decisions, acts of Congress, secret memos, song lyrics, cartoons, photographs, news reports, advertisements, and first-hand testimony collected in this reader take students from the New Left to the New Right, from Vietnam to Woodstock, from suburbia to the moon, and from evangelicals to environmentalists. With headnotes that place each text into historical context and an introduction that examines the difficulties historians face when confronted with an abundance of diverse, often contradictory, evidence, The 1960s offers students a sophisticated introduction to this most beguiling yet elusive of decades.
About the Author
Brian Ward is Professor of American Studies at the University of Manchester. His major publications include the award winning books Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (1998) and Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (2004). He is currently working on a book about the relationship between the American South and the world of British popular music.
