From: Michael Wm. Doyle <mwdoyle@bsu.edu>
Date: 3 November 2001
Dear Sixties-l members:
I thought it might interest you to know that our long-awaited edited volume, _Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s_ has just been published by Routledge of New York.
Amidst the continued flourishing of Sixties scholarship, _Imagine Nation_ is the first collection of interpretive essays to focus solely on the counterculture. Its fourteen authors seek to unearth the complexity and rediscover the society-changing power of this movement's significant figures, radical organizations, alternative institutions, and transgressive practices. The constellation of topics covered include psychedelic drug experimentation, guerilla theater, cultural radicalism in the New Left, Jimi Hendrix and the politics of race in rock music, communal living, alternative energy and appropriate technology, feminist consciousness-raising, gay and lesbian liberation, underground comix, and avant-garde film. As a whole, _Imagine Nation_ offers exciting new interpretations of how the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s irrevocably altered American society.
While we encourage those of you who may wish to purchase a copy to patronize your local independent bookseller, should you want to peruse the table of contents in advance, along with its first review, the Barnes and Noble website has posted both online: <http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=3LKXZ5ZUYC&mscssid=4Q9RP9NK8KSF9ND9H92JG4GVASCE1ET6&isbn=0415930405>. [A graphic of the eye-popping cover design is, however, better viewed via the Amazon.com website at <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0415930405/pictures/14/107-8141771-1640541#tab-link>.] You can also find at these two sites a synopsis of the book and a short biography of co-editor Peter Braunstein and myself.
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"_Imagine Nation_ is a much-needed antidote to the commodification of the '60s and '70s. Today's twenty-something politicos are quick to embrace the era's iconic images, long hair and mini skirts, Afros and peace signs, but not their deeper historical meanings. The essays here give us the meaning, the stories, the politics behind the culture, and offer insights into creating new countercultures for our time and place."
ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, author of _Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!_
"How thrilling to see the maelstrom of the Sixties subjected to trenchant analysis and its various ideologies and expressions compared and contrasted. These scholar-detectives are so sensitive to the mind of the times that I suspect many saw actions on the same streets I and my friends did. I think they got it right."
PETER COYOTE, actor/writer, author of _Sleeping Where I Fall_
"_Imagine Nation_ is an important corrective to the now-fashionable view that the counterculture represented little more than the further commodification of American society. This provocative collection helps to reveal the centrality of subcultures in American history since the 1950s."
ALICE ECHOLS, author of _Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks_
"_Imagine Nation_ is a juicy evocation of the Sixties, a decade that can never be recovered, only imagined - - and this book imagines well."
RICHARD GOLDSTEIN, Executive Editor, _The Village Voice_
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Michael Wm. Doyle www.bsu.edu/classes/doyle
Ball State University mwdoyle@bsu.edu
Department of History (o) 765-285-8732
Burkhardt Building 213 (f) 765-285-5612
Muncie, IN 47306-0480 (h) 765-287-1503
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