The Portable Sixties Reader

Charters' anthology may be the first book about the Sixties that hasn't made me want to braid my hair, paint peace signs on my cheeks, and go stick a daisy in the barrel of a gun. It is, unlike many of its counterparts, a grown-up book. Wiser. Wryer. No longer the cherubic student activist clutching a tiny photo of Che Guevara. This book is 30 years past any sort of giddy optimism. This book is my dad. Get him talking about the Sixties and I don't care how many times you've read "Be Here Now," you will start to feel disillusioned.