From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It

No decade in American history continues to fascinate us like the Sixties. No decade combines such hopeful idealism with such violence and disillusionment, or witnesses such profound political, cultural, and personal upheavals. And no decade benefits more from being seen through the eyes of those who experienced firsthand the shocks and revelations that still reverberate today.
Newly revised and updated, with an expanded introduction, From Camelot to Kent State tells the story of ten of the most dramatic years in the life of America-and of fifty-nine men and women who lived through those years. In their own words, civil rights activists, soldiers who fought in Vietnam, anti-war protesters, student radicals, feminists, Peace Corps workers, and many others take us inside the major events and movements of the period. Far from a dispassionate history of the Sixties, these stories bristle with the tension and immediacy of lived experience. How did it feel to wake up into step out of a helicopter into a Vietnamese jungle; to ride south on a freedom bus, to march on the Pentagon; to take over a college administration building; to hear Jimi Hendrix play the national anthem at Woodstock; to attend the first consciousness-raising meetings for women at the Bread and Roses café? This captivating oral history will let you know.
Included are first-hand accounts from both the famous-including Eldridge Cleaver, Abbie Hoffman, Philip Berrigan, and John Lewis-and the ordinary men and women who were swept up in major historical events, From Camelot to Kent State offers a uniquely valuable view of a decade that forever changed the history and consciousness of America.

Joan Morrison has taught a course on the sixties at New School University for the past twelve years. She is also co-author of the award-winning oral history American Mosaic about immigrants to the United States.

Robert K. Morrison is a public relations writer specializing in nonprofit institutions.