American Counterculture

de Damon Bach

"The Rise, Journey, and Demise of the American Counterculture provides a comprehensive history of the counterculture throughout the United States from its antecedents in the 1950s, origins in the early 1960s, emergence in the mid-1960s, and massive expansion in the late 1960s, to its demise in the early 1970s. Working against a historical narrative that portrays hippies and cultural dissidents as a brief-yet-vibrant phenomenon limited to the mid- to late 1960s, Bach focuses on the counterculture's overarching utopian and idealistic goals rather than the trite shorthand of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." Exploring its connections to other movements of the period, including the New Left, civil rights, Black and Red Power, women's and gay liberation, and environmentalism, he demonstrates that the counterculture's push to create a new society fundamentally transformed American culture, and that its core ideals of egalitarianism, environmentalism, community, and creating alternative institutions have persisted to the present day. His is also the first history of the counterculture to draw upon numerous documents written by self-described "freaks" from 1964 through 1973, such as underground newspapers, memoirs, personal correspondence, flyers, and pamphlets"--