Description
Book SynopsisWilliam L. O'Neill's masterly chronicle of the twentieth century's most confounding decade is an immensely readable book that combines wit with learning and seriousness with entertainment. Its emphasis is inevitably on politics, but it offers a brilliant yet balanced portrayal of the New Left, the counterculture, the civil rights movement, the plunge into Vietnam, the crisis in the universities, and the freakier aspects of the popular culture. It has endured as one of the great interpretations of the sixties.
Trade ReviewOne of those rare books that starts out good and improves as it goes along. O'Neill has captured it all at just the right moment with just the right wit and intellect. * Cleveland Press *
A first-rate book that will last for a long time. -- Nicholas von Hoffman
A witty and incisive chronicle of the Pirandello sixties. . . . Seldom have reality and fantasy been so intertwined. -- Studs Terkel
Marvelous, funny, and wise. -- David Halberstam
For those who like their history readable and authentic, this is their book. It does magnificently for the 1960s what Frederick Lewis Allen did for the 1920s. * Chicago Sun-Times *
O’Neill’s 1971 study blows away some of the smoke-screen surrounding that turbulent era. -- Michael Rogers * Library Journal *
Both readable and involving, presenting the political and cultural focus with a twist of wit and sympathetic insight rare to an interpretation of the times. -- James A. Cox * Midwest Book Review *
Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s is both readable and involving. * Bookwatch *
