The Sixties: Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, 1958-74 Book

These days it seems obligatory to either be for or against the 1960s. Arthur Marwick, Professor of history at The Open University, is definitely for them. He likes them so much that this massive--900 close typed pages--account of the decade starts in 1958 and doesn't finish until 1974, but this unorthodox time frame, from the end of post- war austerity to the crunch of the mid-seventies oil crisis, is well chosen. It allows Marwick to place all the famous sixties incidents--the Paris riots, the Vietnam war and protest against the war, Mick Jagger being arrested, the fight for the right to abortion etc.--not only in an historical context, but also to then follow them through to their various conclusions. Marwick focuses on Britain, France, Italy and the United States and while the cultural developments remain in the memory, it was the economic progress, allied to a baby boom, that really invigorated this decade. In America the percentage of the population below the poverty line halved in the years between 1965 and 1975 while in Italy the number of families with television sets and fridges doubled over the same period. "There has been nothing quite like it", Marwick persuasively argues; "nothing would ever be the same again". --Nick WroeRead More