I remember separate drinking fountains, railway cars, bathrooms and laundromats in 1962.

I remember "help wanted" ads separated by gender.

I remember being asked the state of my relationship when applying for my first job. By an older lady.

I remember not being able to get car insurance in my own name when I got my first car at 22, because I was an unmarried female.

I remember being beaten black and blue with a belt for not knowing the words to the church song.

I remember getting a belt whipping for bringing my mother the wrong Bible.

I remember getting four belt whippings in one night. I remember being told to hide the welts from neighbors and teachers...although there was no duty to disclose.

What is this "nothing" the sixties are supposed to have achieved?

actually my children ask me what it was like to live in the 60s and experience all of it as it happened. they ask with the same tone as one would ask about ww2 experience. it is in all of us, all the changes that the era has brought. just try to tell any european or east european about the era and they too lived it, the music, the clothes, the freedoms, the slogans. not that all of it was so great but it is all there and the grumps of this world can just spin their tales. i will not even bother with this book. these are big eras and they are part of our lives now, as much as the christian right has become a part of us, one way or another.

De Groot's thesis and the comments of several posters remind me of a debate I had with a punk about the relative merits of classic rock vs. punk rock. He explained to me that people like him rejected classic rock and became punks because the hippies tried to save the world but failed.

Gosh De Groot. Sorry the hippies failed to save the world! Unlike all those other generations of teenagers who had far greater success at doing so!

Its all those damn dirty hippies' fault.

De Groot's whole approach seems seriously flawed. He blames the hippies for what they didn't achieve but he makes at least 2 huge errors in doing so:

1) He lowballs the positive effects of the 60's. Several posters have already covered this ground, which includes major progress on racial and sexual relations (i.e. women's and gay rights). That in and of itself makes the 60's the most progressive decade in the 20th century.

Other benefits include the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, greatly increased skepticism about war, and the best popular music ever recorded. There is much more besides but what decade accomplished more?* The difference between the 50's and 60's is like night and day and far greater than the difference between, say, the 80's and the 90's.

2) It is very difficult if not impossible to untangle the highly complex web of causal influences that affect the evolution of culture. This makes it easy to say that the hippies are responsible for everything bad that happened and get no credit for all the good. What a crock. De Groot's standard of success is both difficult and unfair to apply. A much more fair standard is what were the hippies trying to accomplish? When you look at the accomplishments described in 1) its obvious that the hippies were on the right side of all of those issues.

But you know who wasn't on the right side of those issues? Republicans. They are the ones responsible for most of what has happened that was bad since the 60's, not the hippies for goddsakes.

De Groot is just another in a long line of contrarian wankers who are usually celebrated in Slate, not Salon. The 60's are like democracy -- the only thing worse than the 60's is every other deacde since and most decades before.

I was a kid in the 60's but I got enough of a taste to know that what followed represents a decline. back in the early 80's there was a bumpersticker that said it all: "Born 20 Years Too Late"

*just to anticipate a lame objection which several commenters have made: nothing in culture is sui generis, everything has precursors, but the achievements in the 60's were in stark contrast to what went before.

The people's liberation movements that gathered force during the '60s are (in my opinion as another professional historian) the decade's most important and enduring feature. These include women's lib, La Raza, gay rights, Black Power, Native American rights movements in both North and South America, and others.

Admittedly, the roots of these liberation movements tend to pre-date the '60s. Yet, this decade put them in the global mainstream and historians like DeGroot, try as they might, cannot halt their momentum or credibly ignore them.

Having not read DeGroot's book I can only ask: does he not acknowledge the complete and irrevocable de-homogenization of society which the 1960's ushered in? And if so, how can he credibly deny the enormity of such a watershed decade? For me, a child of the 70's and 80's, I cannot imagine the world of social conformity that persisted in Western society before that time, a conformity that even extended into and pervaded the much-vaunted avant guard. To my mind, such a cultural revolution can hardly be described as having "no lasting importance" .

Goldcoast amplifies what I was talking about earlier. The De Groot soundbyte that the 60s counterculture achieved nothing and was basically a bunch of affluent consumers totally ignores the real alliances that evolved between different classes and groups during the 60s. To repeat, a lot of us weren't affluent, and we weren't buying into an image. We really advocated for change, and achieved some of what we hoped. Of course we fell short, what movement doesn't.? But it was invigorating and life-changing, and DeGroot's attempt to trivialize it into a 60s version of the shopping mall completely misses the point.

Dianaw

what I found missing from the book critique was any mention of the Civil Rights era and what it was like for minorities. The 60's were definitely pivotal because before the 60's we were mostly invisible unless we were being lynched. I know the decade I was born into changed considerably from the beginning of the decade and the way it went out. My family was subjected to segregation and unfair housing. There were jobs we weren't allowed to hold or universities we were allowed to attend. 1967 was the last year that laws on miscegnation were outlawed. While it began in the 60's and didn't end until the early 70's, there were pools I wasn't allowed to swim in. We had separate communities by law and custom. Our current society is so radically different in terms of access that if you took a time traveller from that era, they would probably be overwhelmed. My great-grandmother was born in 1893 and died in 1969. Believe me when I say she thought the world was a very different place. The last memory I have of her is watching men land on the moon. Don't diss the 60's just because there were a lot of overprivileged white kids acting out. They may feel a little too self-important but when I think about the differences it's like remembering the years before 67 as black and white and after in technicolor.