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Title: The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (The New American Nation Series) by Allen J. Matusow ISBN: 0-06-132058-7 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 June, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gimme Shelter from the Sixties!!!
Comment: Reading this book about the sixties is like listening to the Beatles catalog from beginning to end; it starts out nice and sunny in the beginning and keeps getting stranger and more drugsy towards the end.
Beginning with the Kennedy Camelot era, liberalism was defined as a moderate comporate liberalism that worked with the establishment to make reforms. Corporations were considered basically good by liberals because they produced wealth for most people. The blacks, however, had 51% of the wealth of white people and were largely shut out from the economic and political mainstream. Civil rights legislation began to develop during the Kennedy years and Kennedy responded in the typically foxy way of politicians trying to please two opposing camps so as to get re-elected.
After Kennedy died, Johnson passed the civil rights legislation and it seemed like liberalism's greatest triumph of the decade. Johnson presided over the war on poverty, a program that he tried to make sure did not upset those who were in power by giving more power to poor people to make decisions about how they should get out of poverty. Any attempts to give power to the people were eventually worn down by the inertia of bureaucracy. The author Allen Matusow seems to have favored some form of radical wealth redistribution, instead of the conventional bureaucratic programs.
There is also some discussion about economic policy of those years in the book--the mundane but important issues about how much to tax, how much to spend, how to avoid eoonomic slumps or even collapses, and whether to listen to the economist Keynes or to Friedman.
The rest of the book is an engrossing account of people going crazy with drugs, violence, sex, music, and insurrections. The roots of the counterculture are explained from the black jazz hipsters of the 30s, to the beatniks of the 50s, and to the hippies of the 60s. In the final decadent years, the radical communist left took over the political culture and intensely protested the moderate corporate liberalism of the Johnson era along with his prolongation of the war in Vietnam. The left saw itself as a movement allied with the non-white oppressed against the rich white men who controlled the world through imperialism. It is not discussed in the book whether there was any validity to the claims of such imperialism.
I disagreed with the author's desire to have wealth redistribution, that old concept of giving unearned money to people to spend on whatever. It doesn't address the problem of killing the work incentive, the ablility to handle money wisely, and the innate ability or lack thereof to earn money. I thought that the black nationalism of the era had the better idea of giving blacks their own nation to live in, minus all the violent talk and actions. In fact, Lincoln had planned to give blacks their own nation after Emancipation but it was never fully accomplished. I think it would keep the races intact and reduce infighting among groups with divergent self-interests. But politics is based on short-sidedness and selfishness, such radical visions are dismissed as impractical even though integration can also be said to impractical and eventually will lead to a mixed-race nation, like they have in the third world countries south of the border. We're all headed for Mexico!
Rating: 4
Summary: Great summary of the '60's
Comment: A very good review of the most turbulent decade in the 20th Century. Matusow encapsulates all of the major policy areas that the government dealt with, showing successes and failures as well as his analysis of the situation. For the book's second part, he writes about the left's reactions to these moves and how the various radical groups took certain aspects and focused their discontent upon them. Overall, well-written, very readable, and gives enough detail to satisfy most basic questions the reader might have regarding the issues he covers.
Rating: 3
Summary: Matusow: what was he thinking?
Comment: The "unraveling of america" was by far the most illrepresented mind jarble i have ever read. The authors uncanny ability to misconstrue the facts dealing with the Great Society was so incrediable it actually made me laugh out loud in mid sentence. For all of you considering to by this book my best advise would be to instead purchase a copy of charles murray's book "losing ground".
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Title: Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration by Tamar Jacoby, Tammar Jacoby ISBN: 0465036260 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES) by David M. Kennedy ISBN: 0195144031 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America by Lawrence Goodwyn ISBN: 0195024176 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1978 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 by Charles Murray ISBN: 0465042333 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Search for Order 1877-1920 by Robert H. Wiebe ISBN: 0809001047 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub. Date: 01 October, 1980 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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