Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the 60's

Argues that sixties radicalism was basically destructive and its main legacy is the common belief in America's untrustworthiness

A compilation of memoirs and reportage on the New Left, valuable for its insider insights on New Left strategy and tactics. The authors, celebrated biographers of the Fords, Kennedys, and Rockefellers, primarily use interviews and personal recall to reconstruct an era when moral causes summoned many, but where a willful minority dominated the parapets of activism. Their account might have been enriched with greater psychological analysis of those in the New Left, although their simple analogy of the Left as "like those Japanese soldiers who wandered for years in the jungle, unaware that they had lost the war" may be a more biting explanation. A readable recounting of lost times, lost souls, and lost opportunities. Recommended reading for the politically innocent. Conservative Book Club selection.
- James L. Jablonowski, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.