The Times Were a Changin'; The Sixties Reader

This is a must-have anthology of the milestone speeches, manifestos, court decisions, and groundbreaking journalism of the Sixties. No other period in American history has been more liberating, more confusing, more unforgettable, and had a more direct impact on the way we navigated the profound changes that swept over the country in the following three decades.
        
From Betty Friedan to Barry Goldwater, from the formidable presence of the Kennedy brothers to the unimaginable influence of Woodstock, Pulitzer prize-winning author Irwin Unger and journalist Debi Unger present the complexities of a volatile and tumultuous decade, while explaining how and why each significant event took place and how it shifted the country's consciousness.
        
From the antiwar movement to the moon race, from the burgeoning counterculture to the Warren and Berger courts, and from the civil rights movement to the 1968 presidential campaign, The Times Were a Changin' will tantalize and confound readers, while inspiring and enraging them as well. The Ungers provide us with a better understanding of the strategy and maneuvering of the 1960s war games—from the Bay of Pigs to the Tet Offensive. And the pieces they have chosen help us define the current of social intolerance that plagues our country to this day.
        
Balancing the controversial issues of the times with an even hand, the Ungers give equal time to William F. Buckley and Abbie Hoffman, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey, the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King, Jr., compiling an anthology that supplies rhyme and reason to a decade that never ceases to amaze us, endless in its capacity to be explored and understood.

Library Journal

New York University historian Irwin Unger (The Best of Intentions, LJ 4/1/96) and journalist Debi Unger, who with Irwin coauthored 1968: The Turning Point (LJ 10/15/88), compile an anthology illustrating the social, cultural, and political events that made the 1960s distinctive in American history. The Ungers present nearly 60 letters, manifestos, reports, speeches, essays, articles, and court decisions (e.g., Letter to the New Left, The Great Society speech, NOW Bill of Rights, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and The Conscience of a Conservative) arranged in 12 chapters that include "The Counterculture," "The New Feminism," "The Moon Race," and "Election '68." The Ungers succinctly explain the historical context of the documents in each chapter introduction. Given its breadth and balance but absence of a bibliography, this collection works best as an introductory survey for American history courses. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., College Station

Irwin Unger is a professor of history at New York University. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize for The Greenback Era and has edited several standard history texts.  He is the recipient of several Guggenheim fellowships and a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship. Debi Unger is a journalist who has collaborated with Irwin Unger on The Vulnerable Years, Twentieth-Century America, and Turning Point: 1968. She has also written "Portraits and Documents  for These United States: The Questions of Our Past.