The Shattering
America in the 1960s
30 November 2021
Description
From the National Book Award winner, a masterful history of the decade that exploded America’s postwar order.
On 4 July 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighbourhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, rioting and the blowback of a “silent majority” mobilised by an emerging right, left a fragmented political landscape.
Kevin Boyle’s full-dimensioned history of the decade is authoritative and engrossing. The civil rights movement emerges from the grassroots activism of Montgomery, through the tragic violence of Birmingham, to the frustrations of King’s Chicago campaign and a rising Black nationalism. The Vietnam war unfolds as misguided policy, high-stakes politics and searing in-country experience. Women’s challenges of gender norms yield landmark decisions on privacy rights, contraception and abortion.
With empathy its keynote, this definitive history of the 1960s recovers the humanity behind the decade’s divisions.
Reviews
"[A] rich, layered account of the 1960s." — Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
"[A] luminous guide to a tumultuous decade…Boyle elegantly narrates the ‘60s through his three lenses – race, militarism, and sexuality – and grounds his narrative with individuals caught in the whirlwind." — James A. Morone, The New York Times Book Review
"A lively popular history of the 1960s….Boyle enlivens his narrative with emblematic vignettes." — Glenn C. Altschuler, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Awards
Longlisted — Museum of African American History Stone Book Award, 2022
