The Sixties in America surveys the events and people of the 1960's. The set not only provides in-depth coverage of all aspects of the three major events of the 1960's that give the decade its distinctive character-but also surveys important developments in the arts, science and technology, business and the economy, government and politics and gender issues. The set looks at the most important people and events in the arts, media, music and sports and covers the headline-grabbing news items of the period.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that survey the events and people of the 1960s, discussing their impact on the life and culture of the United States.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Allen Ginsberg and his fellow Beats led an insurrection that profoundly altered the American literary and cultural landscapes. Collected here are journal entries culed from eighteen notebooks that Ginsberg kept during this extraordinary period -- thoughts, poems, dreams, reflections, and diary notes that intimately illuminate Ginsberg's actual travels and his mental journeys. They reveal a remarkable and fascinating life: conversations with William Carlos Williams; drug experiences; a chance meeting with Dylan Thomas; stays in Mexico, San Francisco, and New York; first impressions of "Naked Lunch"; bits and peices of "America, Kaddish" and other poems; political "ravings"; and, of course, times with William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gergory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Peter Orlovsky, and many, many others. What emerges is a truly unique personal account that will touch the mind and the soul.

"What Jane Kramer has written is more than just a biography. It is an informative and passionately human portrayal of Ginsberg's world and the people who populate it. Here Allen Ginsberg and his friends--from the beats of the fifties to the hippies of the sixties--whirl across America from San Francisco to Midwest college towns, from New York's East village to West Coast Indian meditation centers, from lecture halls to be-ins."--Book jacket.

An autobiographical journey through America in the turbulent 1960s—the essential backstory to Ginsberg’s National Book Award–winning volume of poetry Published in 1974, The Fall of America was Allen Ginsberg’s magnum opus, a poetic account of his experiences in a nation in turmoil. What his National Book Award–winning volume documented he had also recorded, playing a reel-to-reel tape machine given to him by Bob Dylan as he traveled the nation’s byways and visited its cities, finding himself again and again in the midst of history in the making—or unmaking. Through a wealth of autopoesy (transcriptions of these recorded poems) published here for the first time in the poet’s journals of this period, Ginsberg can be overheard collecting the observations, events, reflections and conversations that would become his most extraordinary work as he witnessed America at a time of historic upheaval and gave voice to the troubled soul at its crossroads. The Fall of America Journals, 1965–1971 contains some of Ginsberg’s finest spontaneous writing, accomplished as he pondered the best and worst his country had to offer. He speaks of his anger over the war in Vietnam, the continuing oppression of dissidents, intractable struggles, and experiments with drugs and sexuality. He mourns the deaths of his friends Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, parses the intricacies of the presidential politics of 1968, and grapples with personal and professional challenges in his daily life. An essential backstory to his monumental work, the journals from these years also reveal drafts of some of his most highly regarded poems, including “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “Wales Visitation,” “On Neal’s Ashes,” and “Memory Gardens,” as well as poetry published here for the first time and his notes on many of his vivid and detailed dreams. Transcribed, edited, and annotated by Michael Schumacher, a writer closely associated with Ginsberg’s life and work, these journals are nothing less than a first draft of the poet’s journey to the heart of twentieth-century America.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that survey the events and people of the 1960s, discussing their impact on the life and culture of the United States.

This collection is characterized by a prophetic tone inspired by William Blake and Walt Whitman, as well as an objective view characterized by William Carlos Williams. The content is more overtly political than most of his previous poetry with many of the poems about Ginsberg's condemnation of America's actions in Vietnam. Current events such as the Moon Landing and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the death of Che Guevara, and personal events such as the death of Ginsberg's friend and former lover Neal Cassady are also topics.

Written as a cultural weapon and call to arms, 'Howl' touched a nerve in Cold War America and has been controversial from the day it was first read aloud. This is a critical and historical study of the work, elucidating the nexus of politics and literature in which it was written.