History peas: recommend me a book

CNN(I think that is the channel) has had a series in which they thoroughly cover decades. Look for their coverage of the 1960s.

I'd suggest a quick read of the wiki article linked, it's covers a lot of different areas, economy, wars, counterculture, music, film etc. It is a look at the world in the sixties not just the US. You might find certain topics interest you more than others. There are references listed at the end of the article with a further reading section.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s


Netflix has a number of documentaries covering different events which adds the element of video and personal accounts.

1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky

So this is old and covers a wider time frame than you are asking for but one of my top 10 books of all time is The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America from 1932-1972 by William Manchester. It's gossipy, focuses on social history and has plenty of pop history and well, for me at least, it's almost can't put downable. FWIW, it has great ratings on both Amazon and Goodreads. Some of the things he covers leading up to WWII and the immediate aftermath (particularly Father Coughlin) gave me some hope over the Trump years. It's a BIG book because it covers so much time but I don't feel like it skimps on the details.

mmm, I want to read that Manchester book, too.

I don’t really have any book suggestions for you, but I just wanted to say: I turned 7 in 1960 (and I remember the presidential election that year) and 16 in 1969. In between … I cannot over-emphasize the massive social upheaval that took place in between. The world was a very different place when we came out the other end. I’ve never experienced anything like it since.

When I was 7, we wore white gloves to go into the city for shopping or dinner. Girls could only wear dresses to school and no one’s mom worked unless they were really poor, or if she was a single mom. There were no (ZERO) black families in my suburb or at my school.

By the time I turned 16 … well, you know. JFK assassination, civil rights and voting rights, the Beatles, student protests, the Black Panthers, the Vietnam war, pot and LSD, more assassinations, the 1968 Democratic national convention, lots of rock star ODs, long hair on boys and second wave feminism, Woodstock, the Charles Manson murders, Stonewall riots, “free love” … and we watched it all happen. It was staggering.

Should be fun reading.


ETA I just ordered what might be the last set on Amazon. At least from my seller.

PBS Documentaries (I subscribe via Prime) has several and they also have a lot of great coverage of the civil rights movement for Black history month.

Second the CNN decades documentaries.

A great insight into the first half of the 1960s can be found in Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power which covers Lyndon Johnson’s life from 1958 through 1964. (Caro hasn’t completed the final volume of his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson which will cover the period from 1964 until Johnson’s death).

I can’t even begin to say how much I love Caro’s biography of LBJ. Caro is such a great writer. He says his books about LBJ are more a study of power and how one grabs it and uses it than they are about LBJ. What I love about his books is that they are so descriptive and paint such a vivid picture of what was going on in society during the time period Caro is writing about. His books are thick but very readable and engaging.

In The Passage of Power, Caro writes extensively about such topics as the 1960 Presidential election, the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination, the early days of LBJ’s Presidency and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act. Caro’s books read more like a novel at times than a work of nonfiction, although he is famous for his meticulous research.

I second this one…I took an American history class that focused on the 60s and this was my favorite book we read for that class.

I've cringed a bit at some of his language which was normal when he wrote the book but is absolutely not accepted now.  I also took some offense at his first descriptions of Marilyn Monroe and the implied sexism of some of his observations but then he did a deeper dive later that made me less offended.  All of this to say, some of this book has not aged well and I can see why they haven't issued a recent reprint.  But the bones are great and for me, the repeated themes continue to give me optimism.  We may not remember that we've been here before but we definitely have been here before and the pendulum just keeps swinging back and forth.  And the social history is golden. 

The late Representative John Lewis wrote a wonderful biography, Walking With the Wind, that details a lot of the civil rights movement. It's a great read.

Not a book, but come on up this-a-way and go to the LBJ museum! We could have lunch, just sayin'!