>From: Ted Morgan <epm2@Lehigh.EDU>
>Subject: Book Announcement: What Really Happened to the 1960s
>
>All,
>
>I thought some on the list would be interested to hear that my book
>project of the last 11 years has come to an end and "What Really
>Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American
>Democracy," is being published by the University Press of Kansas
>--just published. I've included the catalog copy about the book and
>the cover blurbs below and would appreciate your sharing it with any
>others you think may be interested.
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Ted
-----------
>*What Really Happened to the 1960s*
>
>*How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy *
>
>*Edward P. Morgan *
>
>November 2010
>456 pages, 35 photographs, 6 x 9
>Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1756-2, $39.95
>
>Book cover imageWherever we turn these days, we encounter reminders
>of the sixties. They're invoked in presidential campaigns, American
>military actions, and outbursts of mass protest. We're bombarded
>with media-saturated anniversaries of iconic events, from JFK's
>inauguration (and assassination) to urban riots and Woodstock. But
>as Edward Morgan suggests, these references offer little more than
>an endless stream of distracting imagery that has more to do with
>today's politics and economics than with the reality of yesterday's
>social movements.
>
>In his provocative look at mass media's connection with those
>turbulent years, Morgan simultaneously seeks to explain what
>happened in the 1960s and what happened to how we remember it. His
>comprehensive overview and critical analysis reveal how the mass
>media have shaped the popular image of a raucous decade in ways that
>have curtailed its promise of democracy.
>
>Morgan's in-depth study of sixties social movements and their
>depictions in corporate America's print media, film, and television
>helps to explain why the past still provokes deep emotions—even
>antagonism—half a century later. He blends history, sociology,
>political science, media and cultural studies, and critical theory
>to explain why the 1960s have been so virulently targeted,
>particularly by critics on the right who blame today's
>self-indulgent culture on baby boomers and "sixties permissiveness"
>instead of the real culprits: consumer-driven capitalism and
>neoliberal politics.
>
>Emphasizing the tensions between capitalism and democracy, Morgan
>investigates the fate of democracy in our media-driven culture,
>first by examining the ways that the 1960s were represented in the
>media at the time, then by exploring how popular versions of the
>sixties have glossed over their more radically democratic qualities
>in favor of sensationalism and ideological constructions. He reminds
>us of what really happened—then shows us how the media trivialized
>and satirized those events, co-opting and commercializing the
>decade's legacy and, in doing so, robbing it of its more radical,
>democratic potential.
>
>By revisiting this chapter of the past, Morgan shows that it has
>much to tell us about where we are today and how we got here.
>Whether you lived through the sixties or only read about them—or
>only saw Hollywood's version of them in 'Forrest Gump'—this book
>will put their lessons in clearer perspective.
>
>"This important book provides an illuminating historical overview,
>critical analysis, and appraisal of the 1960s. Drawing upon
>historical and media studies, theories of capitalism and democracy,
>and in-depth study of the era's social movements, Morgan provides an
>extremely comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the events and
>aftermath of the 1960s. Based on highly impressive research, his
>study should appeal to a large audience interested in how that
>decade's more radical spirit continues to live on in our
>society."—*Douglas Kellner,* author of /Media Spectacle and the
>Crisis of Democracy/ and /Media Culture/
>
>"In this sophisticated and provocative analysis, Morgan demonstrates
>that while the mainstream media has been obsessed with the 1960s,
>its portrayal has consistently stressed the sensational and violent
>aspects of that decade while downplaying two of its most important
>components: a sense of hope that society could be changed and the
>sense that the basic social, economic, and political structures of
>American society, in particular the power of corporate capitalism,
>were at the heart of our problems. Such an approach, Morgan
>convincingly demonstrates, has helped to create a society in which
>the mass of the population feels ever more hopeless, alienated, and
>disconnected from one another, in which our fundamental problems can
>never even be addressed, much less solved."
>*Robert Justin Goldstein,* author of /Political Repression in Modern
>America/ and /Flag Burning and Free Speech/
>
>"By detailing how our historical memory and images of the sixties
>differ in major respects from what actually happened, Ted Morgan has
>produced a case study of the past that teaches us a great deal about
>contemporary political discourse. He shows how the mainstream mass
>media, in its norms and practices, simultaneously promotes—but also
>limits and contains—democratic engagement."
>*William A. Gamson*, author of /The Strategy of Social Protest /
>
>"Political scripts left behind by the corrosive cultural convulsions
>of the 1960s and 1970s, endlessly depicted and recast by the mass
>media, are recoded as self-satire, corporate backlash, institutional
>failure, generational conflict, belligerent discourse, televised
>violence, and distrusted authority. Morgan's analysis is a valuable
>exploration for anyone interested in how the workings of mass media
>and popular culture in America since the 1960s led us to where we are today."
>*Timothy W. Luke,* author of/ Screens of Power: Ideology,
>Resistance, and Domination in Informational Society/
>
>*EDWARD P. MORGAN *is University Distinguished Professor of
>Political Science at Lehigh University and author of /The Sixties
>Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America./
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