Recommended Resources
The Sixties
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Flamm, Michael W. and David Steigerwald. Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.
Bloch, Avital H., and Lauri Umansky, eds. Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960’s. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Parmet, Herbert S. Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy. New York: Dial Press, 1980.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York: Harper Perennial Political Classics, 2009.
Flamm, Michael W. Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali in Perspective. San Francisoco: HarperCollins, 1996.
Evans, Sara M. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Glazer, Tom, comp. Songs of Peace, Freedom, and Protest. New York: D. McKay, 1970.
The Making of the President: The 1960 (1963)
Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change: Studies in Popular Culture. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972.
Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: A Concise International History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Manis, Andrew Michael. A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.
O’Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
Ogbar, Jeffrey Ogbonna Green. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Chafe, William H. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Matthews, Christopher. Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.
Rosenberg, Norman L. Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
May, Elaine Tyler. Pushing the Limits: American Women, 1940–1961. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
Chafe, William H., Raymond Gavins, Robert Korstad, et al., eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South. New York: New Press, 2001.
Parmet, Herbert S. Richard Nixon and His America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
LeCompte, Tom. The Last Sure Thing: The Life and Times of Bobby Riggs. Easthampton, MA: Black Squirrel Publishing, 2003.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton, 1993.
Court, Margaret, with Barbara Oldfield. Winning Faith: The Margaret Court Story. Sydney: Strand, 2000.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.