Out of Chaos - Support Material

Progressing at a dizzying, frenetic pace, the 1960s were synonymous with rebellion and conflict. No other decade in the 20th century was so tumultuous. This gripping and engagingly written guide to the forces that shaped the 1960s cultural revolution examines the New Left, the antiwar movement, and the counterculture. A narrative historical overview puts the decade in perspective. Essays follow on each of the above topics, and a concluding essay discusses the legacy of the era. The work also features a wealth of ready reference material--a comprehensive timeline of events in the 1960s, biographical profiles of key players, the text of important primary documents associated with the political, social and cultural rebellion, a glossary of terms, and a helpful annotated bibliography of print and non-print materials suitable for students. Bringing to life the passion of the era are the texts of primary documents such as statements from the Students for a Democratic Society, speeches by leaders of the student protest movement and the Hippies, interviews, and responses from establishment politicians.

Melvin Small's invaluable book persuasively analyzes media coverage of the antiwar movement and in doing so shatters the persistent and mischievous notion that the media lionized the antiwar movement and undermined support for the War."--George C. Herring, University of Kentucky It is commonly believed that, during the Vietnam War, journalists relayed a favorable image of antiwar protesters. Melvin Small explodes that myth. Journalists may do their best to be fair, but even fair reporters learn to focus on the violent and bizarre activities that make for dramatic news. They may capture behavior on the fringes of a march, rather than the tone of the march as a whole. They may ignore the arguments of the movement's leaders, which seem boring in comparison to action shots. Small's commentary effectively portrays the battle between activists and the media while painting a compelling picture of Americans' inclination to accept the media's caricaturing lens.

More than twenty-five years after the official end of the Vietnam War, Dear America allows us to witness the war firsthand through the eyes of the men and women who served in Vietnam. In this collection of more than 200 letters, they share their first impressions of the rigors of life in the bush, their longing for home and family, their emotions over the conduct of the war, and their ache at the loss of a friend in battle. Revealing the complex emotions and daily realities of fighting in the war, these close accounts offer a powerful, uniquely personal portrait of the many faces of Vietnam's veterans.

This work offers an introduction to the best-known antiwar movement in United States history, written by veterans of the Vietnam War and participants in the movement. It examines how the activities of the movement affected the lives of most Americans.

Why did millions of Americans become activists; why did they take to the streets? These are questions Terry Anderson explores in The Movement and The Sixties, a searching history of the social activism that defined a generation of young Americans and that called into question the very nature of "America." Drawing on interviews, "underground" manuscripts collected at campuses and archives throughout the nation, and many popular accounts, Anderson begins with Greensboro and reveals how one event built upon another and exploded into the kaleidoscope of activism by the early 1970s. Civil rights, student power, and the crusade against the Vietnam War composed the first wave of the movement, and during and after the rip tides of 1968, the movement changed and expanded, flowing into new currents of counterculture, minority empowerment, and women's liberation.

In Sitting In and Speaking Out, Jeffrey A. Turner examines student movements in the South to grasp the nature of activism in the region during the turbulent 1960s. Turner argues that the story of student activism is too often focused on national groups like Students for a Democratic Society and events at schools like Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley. Examining the activism of black and white students, he shows that the South responded to national developments but that the response had its own trajectory-one that was rooted in race.

The third edition of Takin' it to the streets revises the comprehensive collection of primary documents from the 1960s that has become the leading reader about the era. Adopted nationwide, this anthology brings together representative writings, many of which had been unavailable for years or had never been reprinted. The book focuses on civil rights, Black Power, the counterculture, the women's movement, anti-war activity, and gay and lesbian struggles, as well as the conservative current that ran counter to more typical sixties movements. Covering an extremely popular period of history, Takin' it to the streets remains the most accessible and authoritative reader of an extraordinary decade, one unlike any America had seen before or has experienced since.

This volume is intended to demonstrate how opposition to the war in Vietnam, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the figures discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt that the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions, even though their definitions of what was sacred differed profoundly. To an extent many of the dissenters treated in this volume were at one time Cold War liberals. During the course of the Vietnam War, they came to see the foreign policy which they were supporting, with its willingness to invoke the democratic ideal and at the same time tolerate dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism, as morally and politically corrupt.

This volume breaks new ground in the treatment it affords critiques of the war offered by conservative students, in its assessment of antiwar sentiment among Midwestern and Southern college students, and in its investigation of antiwar protests in American high schools. It also provides fresh insight through a discussion of the ways in which American films depicted the student movements and an examination of the role of women and religion in the campus wars of the Sixties and Seventies. Each essay in this collection strives not only to present a fair-minded picture of the impact of the Vietnam War on campus, but also to offer balanced reflections on its significance for today's body politic.

In an idyllic community of wealthy California families, new teacher Molly Nicoll becomes intrigued by the hidden lives of her privileged students. Unknown to Molly, a middle school tragedy in which they were all complicit continues to reverberate for her kids- Nick, the brilliant scam artist; Emma, the gifted dancer and party girl; Dave, the B student who strives to meet his parents' expectations; Calista, the hippie outcast who hides her intelligence for reasons of her own. Theirs is a world in which every action may become public-postable, shareable, indelible. With the rare talent that transforms teenage dramas into compelling and urgent fiction, Lindsey Lee Johnson makes vivid a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with the sorrow, passion, and beauty of life in any time, and at any age.