It is an ambitious project to attempt to cover the whole of a decade in one book and it felt like rather a big task to just read it. DeGroot's central premise is that the 1960s weren't the idealistic revolutionary decade that is looked back through rose tinted glasses and its legacy isn't necessary the things most people immediately think of. In his introduction, he admits that he can't include everything and whilst the USA forms the most of his text, he does cover events in other places too. For the most part I enjoyed the book and I think his assessment is very fair and well reasoned.

Probably one of the most interesting aspects of the book for me is the idea that rather than left-wing liberal ideas, it was the conservative movement that really took hold in this decade and would have the biggest impact on the future - this was the decade Regan went into politics which is an interest chapter here as is the part of conservative youth politics. I also found the chapters on the Provos in the Netherlands and Cesar Chavez interesting as I didn't know anything about them.

The weakest parts of the book were mainly the ones which I already knew quite a bit about. The chapter on mods was poorly written with the author seeming to confuse various English seaside towns as if they were one in the same place. Having read Mark Kurlansky's 1968 The Year that Rocked the World , I wasn't as interested in the sections on 1968. But these are small grumbles and overall I'm glad I read this book as it offered a different perspective on a well-worn subject. ( )

A sort of American counterpart to Dominic Sandbrook's Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, examining and in many cases debunking the rosy image presented to us of the 1960s as some sort of wave of free-spirited liberation that washed out the staid attitudes of the 1950s. It's certainly not the first book to take such an approach, but considering how deeply the idea in entrenched in popular perception, still welcome. Despite the at times cynical eye, I felt the subject matter was treated objectively, rather than conservative attack on the sacred cows of the left and liberalism. ( )