Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Rise of America's 1960s Counterculture

This massive and impressively researched look at the cultural revolutions in the U.S. in the post-WWII years is a perfect text for a college class on 1960s culture. Fully aware that "the hippies of the 1960s, of course, were hardly the first countercultural figures to appear in the United States," Cottrell (Icons of American Popular Culture) begins with detailed looks at four early countercultural figures: Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry attacked the "conservatism and conformity" of American 1950s culture; Jack Kerouac, whose novel "On The Road" popularized the youthful image of the restless wanderer; Timothy Leary, the most notable proselytizer for LSD; and author Ken Kesey, whose Merry Prankster commune "kicked off the liberal employment of psychedelics." Cottrell expertly shows how their outlaw images and ideas influenced almost every aspect of the 1960s counterculture, including the political shift from peaceful protest to the violence of the Weathermen, the popularization of the use of psychedelics for personal liberation, and the move from cities into country communes as an escape from the collapsing countercultural ideals in the 1970s. Cottrell believes that the positive aspects of 1960s culture live on, quoting Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand's belief that "the counterculture's scorn for centralized authority provided the philosophical foundations of not only the leaderless Internet but also the entire personal-computer revolution." (Mar.)