A Summary of 'America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s'

In the summary of the book “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s” Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin say that the 60s was a bad year for America because of three reasons which were black vs white, liberal vs conservative, and old vs young. They look at the 60s as “movements and issues that arose soon after the end of World War II” (Isserman). In this summary it is stated that one of the biggest issue during the 1960s was race. Many African Americans after World War II believed that they would have better lives in the north but they soon realized that that discrimination was not restricted to the south. In the middle of the 1960s a riot broke out which ended in horror and fear so instead of pretesting calmly and getting good results the blacks did not get good results. With the Vietnam war going on there was more horror and weakness in
With the Vietnam war going on it was hard for people to make the best out of their country. Many people were scared and felt they could not trust the government. When a country is scared and feels betrayed there is not going to be much peace or happiness. With no peace with no peace and happiness chaos occurs. In the summary of the book it talked about teenagers idolizing sex and drugs and I think that they used sex and drugs to deal with the war and the horror of the 60s. With teenagers freaking out and going crazy then adults are forced to act stricter and that only puts the country more on edge then it already was. The book also mentions how rock and roll influenced many teenagers during the 90s which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless the rock and roll songs talk about bad things and if teenagers used rock and roll to bring harm to the country. Not only were American citizens not doing well but some of the most influential American heroes were lost in the sixties including John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther