Description
Book SynopsisThe Other Side of the Sixties offers a gripping account of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an organization that became a leading force in promoting conservative ideas and that helped lay the groundwork for today's conservatism.
Trade ReviewComprehensive, dispassionate, and useful. -- David Frum * Manhattan Institute *
A fascinating account of a too long overlooked aspect of the 1960s: the counterattack of AmericaÆs young conservatives who battled the left courageously and ultimately won the war. -- William A. Rusher * Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute *
Professor AndrewÆs book fills a gaping hole in the social/political history of the sixties. He tells us now of the spirited movement of young people that peaked in the election of Ronald Reagan. -- William F. Buckley Jr.
There are good histories of post-WW II conservative thought such as George H. NashÆs The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, since 1945 (CH, Oct Æ76), but there has long been a need for more serious scholarship on postwar American conservative movements. Andrew (history, Franklin Marshall College) expertly fills this need for one movementùYoung Americans for Freedomùwhich, as he points out, was the most controversial youth movement in US politics in the first half of the 1960Æsà.Andrew is especially sharp in providing a rewarding look inside YAF in these years, explaining its organizational dynamics, its leadership and their interpersonal conflicts, and the factional struggles over distinguishing YAF from both liberal Republicans and John Birchers. * Choice *
Andrew makes a significant contribution to sixtiesÆ historiography by refocusing scholarly and public attention on the activities of conservative youth during that tumultuous decade. -- Mary C. Brennan * author of Turning Right in the Sixties *
Table of ContentsThe origins of the "new right"
The republican party, 1960, and the struggle over "modern republicanism"
The Sharon Conference and the Founding of YAF
The thrill of treason
Divisions in conservative ranks
Attacking the new frontier
JFK and the right wing
Taking on the G.O.P
YAF and the crusade for conservatism in 1964
