THE SIXTIES UNPLUGGED

A squarish yet thorough survey of the time of torment.

Born in 1955, DeGroot (Modern History/Univ. of St. Andrews; Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest, 2006, etc.) was, he admits, an observer but not a participant in the tumultuous decade, and he approvingly quotes Louis Menand’s contention that the problem with ’60s history is “that it is written by those who care too much about the decade.” DeGroot isn’t exactly indifferent, but his interest seems to lie in looking at the time through the horn rims of the Silent Majority rather than the granny glasses of Greenwich Village. Indeed, at the outset he trumpets the fact that Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” outsold John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” though the terms are unclear: The former was released in 1966, the latter in mid-1969, so it stands to reason that the Sadler would have outsold the Lennon in the ’60s. And Sadler is forgotten today, while Lennon lives on. Whatever the case, the datum points to DeGroot’s concern to tell the story of the time as one in which “Sugar, Sugar” gets equal billing with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” in which blue-collar patriots outnumbered but did not outshout the Abbie Hoffmans of the world. The author visits familiar ground throughout; here his narrative touches on the Cuban missile crisis, there on the Civil Rights movement, here on Tet, there on Chappaquiddick. To his credit, DeGroot travels outside the United States too, calling on the London Mods and the protesters at Tlatelolco before the Mexico City massacre of 1968. The author attributes to the comic Robin Williams the tagline, “If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there,” which other sources attribute to Timothy Leary and even Grace Slick. But no matter. His dismissal of nostalgia for the era as misplaced could well be countered by observing that, given what has followed, it seems like not such a bad time after all, even if it makes Pat Buchanan foam at the mouth.

A useful primer for those who, indeed, weren’t there—but best read alongside eyewitness accounts such as Todd Gitlin’s Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage and Ronald Fraser’s 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt.