The 60s Unplugged

Gerard De Groot, the author of this new and sweeping history of the global 1960s (sweeping in both its geographical spread and its combative, revisionist arguments), is a prolific and eclectic scholar who has written highly acclaimed books on the First World War, the Vietnam War, the Atomic Bomb and the Space Age. In this work he explores a period he lived through (in the United States), presumably as an adolescent, as he came to Britain to study for his Ph.D. only in 1985 and he is now a Professor of Modern History at St Andrews. It would have enhanced this fascinating, but rather one-dimensional, study to have had an historiographical chapter at the beginning so that we could identify, as readers, which historical accounts of the 1960s have so maddened him; for this is a very impassioned work which often bursts out into pure, or (as he would say) ‘raw’, invective. (See, for example, his overwrought assessment of Martin Luther King: ‘Birds shit on statues. Heroes are defenceless against Time’s erosion ... In the end, King should be judged on his talents and his achievements. The world has seen few heroes like him. He, more than anyone, managed to fire the conscience of America—white and black ... His talents and achievements render him a great deal more admirable than many other Sixties heroes ...’ (p. 309). In a sense, although this book claims to be a global history, the author is at his most compelling on the political machinations in the US between c.1965 and 1973, over the country’s prolonged and catastrophic military engagement in South-East Asia (chs. 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11 and passim). This is his field and he delivers a riveting narrative of the whole episode in American political and military history. He is also authoritative on the American civil rights movement and its shifting contours: away from peaceful protest and the inspiring rhetoric of King’s speeches, and towards the thuggish, violent and youth-driven Black Power movement (chs. 4, 5, 7 and 11)

Archaeology · Art history · Conscience · Historiography · Invective · Political science · Politics · Shit · White (mutation · American Political and Social Dynamics · Classics · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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