Prison writings of John Sinclair "the father of the midwest rock and roll scene" in the early 1970s.

A definitive history of the MC5 that considers the band’s musical legacy and revolutionary political roots.

The 1960s on Film tells the narrative of the 1960s through the lens of the movie camera, analyzing 10 films that focus on the people, events, and issues of the decade. Films create both an impression of and — at times for younger audiences — a primary definition of events, people, and issues of an era. The 1960s on Film examines the 1960s as the decade was presented in ten films that focused on that decade. Discussion will focus on both what the films have to say about the era and how close they come to accurately depicting it. For example, films such as Mississippi Burning and Selma tell the story of racial conflict and hope for reconciliation in the 1960s. Other films such as The Right Stuff and Hidden Figures show the deep fascination America had at that time with the burgeoning space program and NASA, while Easy Rider analyzes the role of rock music and drugs among young people of the decade. The Deer Hunter studies the controversies surrounding the war in Vietnam. The Graduate, Mad Men, JFK, and Thirteen Days also receive significant treatment in this exciting volume.

Sex in the Heartland is the story of the sexual revolution in a small university town in the quintessential heartland state of Kansas. Bypassing the oft-told tales of radicals and revolutionaries on either coast, Beth Bailey argues that the revolution was forged in towns and cities alike, as "ordinary" people struggled over the boundaries of public and private sexual behavior in postwar America. Bailey fundamentally challenges contemporary perceptions of the revolution as simply a triumph of free love and gay lib. Rather, she explores the long-term and mainstream changes in American society, beginning in the economic and social dislocations of World War II and the explosion of mass media and communication, which aided and abetted the sexual upheaval of the 1960s. Focusing on Lawrence, Kansas, we discover the intricacies and depth of a transformation that was nurtured at the grass roots. Americans used the concept of revolution to make sense of social and sexual changes as they lived through them. Everything from the birth control pill and counterculture to Civil Rights, was conflated into "the revolution," an accessible but deceptive simplification, too easy to both glorify and vilify. Bailey untangles the radically different origins, intentions, and outcomes of these events to help us understand their roles and meanings for sex in contemporary America. She argues that the sexual revolution challenged and partially overturned a system of sexual controls based on oppression, inequality, and exploitation, and created new models of sex and gender relations that have shaped our society in powerful and positive ways. Table of Contents: Introduction Before the Revolution Sex and the Therapeutic Culture Responsible Sex Prescribing the Pill Revolutionary Intent Sex as a Weapon Sex and Liberation Remaking Sex Epilogue Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: [A] vivid reminder of just how national and chaotic the events we call 'the sixties' really were...Bailey's exploration of the sexual revolution offers a subtler sense of the underlying forces of that era, which unified even while dividing a nation and, ultimately, the world. --Tom Engelhardt, The Nation Reviews of this book: [Beth Bailey's] applied research here is interesting, imaginative and compassionate, and the final treat is that Bailey is a very good writer. Sex in the Heartland is simply a fascinating read. I'm sorry I can't call her up and congratulate her on this book in person...[This book is] beautifully shaped, carefully thought out, a treasury of useful information. --Carolyn See, Washington Post Reviews of this book: One of the great strengths of this book is Bailey's ability to make local characters, institutions and fights vital and compelling, all the while keeping an eye on the broader issues at stake. She gives us a vivid portrait of one university town in transition and a case study for U.S. social history. A cast of local characters comes alive...Virtually every chapter has surprising, subtle turns in which Bailey's thesis of historical paradox and unintended consequences is amply demonstrated. --Maureen McLane, Chicago Tribune Reviews of this book: Published by the prestigious Harvard University Press, the book suggests that out-of-the-mainstream states such as Kansas actually were on the cutting edge of the nation's sexual revolution during the early 1960s. --Matt Moline, Capital-Journal Reviews of this book: "[Bailey] points out that those who claim the radical nature of the [sexual] revolution may be surprised by just how deep-seated and mainstream the origins of many of those revolutionary changes were." --Philip Godwin, M.D., Journal-World Reviews of this book: "Bailey examines the 20th-century 'sexual revolution' as it played out in the midwestern college town of Lawrence, Kansas...Bailey is especially perceptive on the ambivalent and conflicted relationship of both the feminist and gay rights movements to the sexual revolution. She also has strong sections on the birth control pill and other moremundane but long-lasting changes in American sexual culture...[A] fascinating and impressive book." --K. Blaser, Choice

In his 1967 megahit "San Francisco," Scott McKenzie sang of "people in motion" coming from all across the country to San Francisco, the white-hot center of rock music and anti-war protests. At the same time, another large group of young Americans was also in motion, less eagerly, heading for the jungles of Vietnam. Now, in The Republic of Rock, Michael Kramer draws on new archival sources and interviews to explore sixties music and politics through the lens of these two generation-changing places--San Francisco and Vietnam. From the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to hippie disc jockeys on strike, the military's use of rock music to "boost morale" in Vietnam, and the forgotten tale of a South Vietnamese rock band, The Republic of Rock shows how the musical connections between the City of the Summer of Love and war-torn Southeast Asia were crucial to the making of the sixties counterculture. The book also illustrates how and why the legacy of rock music in the sixties continues to matter to the meaning of citizenship in a global society today. Going beyond clichéd narratives about sixties music, Kramer argues that rock became a way for participants in the counterculture to think about what it meant to be an American citizen, a world citizen, a citizen-consumer, or a citizen-soldier. The music became a resource for grappling with the nature of democracy in larger systems of American power both domestically and globally. For anyone interested in the 1960s, popular music, and American culture and counterculture, The Republic of Rock offers new insight into the many ways rock music has shaped our ideas of individual freedom and collective belonging.

A polemic against corporate rock bands, magazines, and festivals, and anyone or anything else who commodifies rebellion.

Dancing Barefoot is the full and true story of Patti Smith, widely acknowledged as one of the most significant American artists of the rock 'n' roll era, a performer whose audience and appeal reach far beyond the parameters of rock. An acclaimed poet, a respected artist, and a figurehead for many liberal political causes, Patti Smith soared from an ugly-duckling childhood in postwar New Jersey to become queen of the New York arts scene in the 1970s. This book traces the brilliant trajectory of her career, including the fifteen reclusive years she spent in Detroit in the 1980s and '90s, as well as her triumphant return to New York. But it is primarily the story of a performer growing up in New York City in the early and mid-1970s. Dancing Barefoot is a measured, accurate, and enthusiastic account of Smith's career. Guided by interviews with those who have known her—including Ivan Kral, Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, John Cale, and Jim Carroll—it relies most of all on Patti's own words. This is Patti's story, told as she might have seen it, had she been on the outside looking in.