Useful attempt to identify the writers and activists of the 1940's
and 50's who most influenced progressive thought in the 60's. Seeds
resurrects the contributions of 15 people, many now forgotten,
whose work underlay the radical activism of the 60's (see Farber
above). The 60's can't be explained without a look at the influence
of such partisan figures, the authors (Lund University, Sweden;
Social Movements, 1991, etc.) insist. They're right: Seeds is a
useful corrective to the notion that 60's activism arose in a
vacuum (the vacuum the 40% and 50's are often assumed to have
been). The authors' choice of figures is salutary. They include
"insideractivist" ecologist Fairfield Osborne, who reinvented the
zoo as a site of environmental education; Lewis Mumford, whose
writings on literature, technology, and the urban environment
opened crucial lines of theoretical inquiry; Leo Szilard, who
conceived the atom bomb and then fought against those who
controlled it; and Mary McCarthy, whose frank and satirical writing
about women's lives developed the kind of consciousness that led to
the women's liberation movement. The book also includes a number of
figures too-long neglected - cultural theorist C. Wright Mills,
Marxist psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, activist ecologist Rachel
Carson, community organizer Saul Alinsky, Catholic Worker founder
Dorothy Day, and philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Inevitably, these
activists had their own antecedents. Discussion of such forerunners
(Dewey and Emerson among them) helps underscore the existence of a
long progressive tradition in American thought. The book's chief
drawback lies in its formal structure - introductory material tends
to dryness; chapters are closed by repetitive summations; material
on the figures themselves tends to get squeezed out (the section on
Martin Luther King, for example, is woefully short). The authors
might have done better to weave their own observations into writing
about the figures, making this collective biography more truly
collective. Still, Seeds of the Sixties serves a crucial purpose;
hopefully it will lead readers to further investigate the work of
the important and interesting figures it examines. (Kirkus Reviews)
"The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have
become an enduring part of American cultural and political history.
But where did Sixties radicalism come from? Who planted the
intellectual seeds that brought it into being? These questions are
answered with striking clarity in Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman's
book. The result is a combination of history and biography that
vividly portrays an entire culture in transition.
The authors focus on specific individuals, each of whom in his or
her distinctive way carried the ideas of the 1930s into the decades
after World War II, and each of whom shared in inventing a new kind
of intellectual partisanship. They begin with C. Wright Mills,
Hannah Arendt, and Erich Fromm and show how their work linked the
"old left" of the Thirties to the "new left" of the Sixties. Lewis
Mumford, Rachel Carson, and Fairfield Osborn laid the groundwork
for environmental activism; Herbert Marcuse, Margaret Mead, and Leo
Szilard articulated opposition to the postwar
"scientific-technological state." Alternatives to mass culture were
proposed by Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, and Mary McCarthy; and
Saul Alinsky, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr., made
politics personal.
This is an unusual book, written with an intimacy that brings to
life both intellect and emotion. The portraits featured here
clearly demonstrate that the transforming radicalism of the Sixties
grew from the legacy of an earlier generation of thinkers. With a
deep awareness of the historical trends in American culture, the
authors show us the continuing relevance these partisan
intellectuals have for our own age.
""In a time colored by 'political correctness' and theascendancy of
market liberalism, it is well to remember the partisan
intellectuals of the 1950s. They took sides and dissented without
becoming dogmatic. May we be able to say the same about
ourselves.""--from Chapter 7
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