Cover of Gates Of Eden

Gates Of Eden

During the sixties, says Morris Dickstein, America seemed to be at the gates of Eden—verging on a new way of experiencing life, art & culture. In this provocative book, he discusses how we reached the gates & why, in the end, they remained closed. Beginning with Allen Ginsberg & the Beat poets of the late fifties, Dickstein traces the rise of a new sensibility in American thought, writing & music thru lively & incisive analyses of such sixties icons as Kurt Vonnegut, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, Paul Goodman, Norman O. Brown & the Rolling Stones.

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Now, on the 20th anniversary of the book's original publication, Dickstein has written a new introduction, reassessing the period's achievements & failures, & providing a fresh perspective on the ways that the sixties continue to influence our politics & culture.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 312 pages

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Liked Gates Of Eden? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Gates Of Eden. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage Shares history, sixties, nonfiction
  2. 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture & the Shaping of a Generation Shares sixties, history, nonfiction
  3. Grammars of Creation Shares nonfiction, history, literary criticism
  4. Takin' It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader Shares history, sixties, nonfiction

“People who read Gates Of Eden tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Southern Honor: Ethics And Behavior In The Old South
  2. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, Volume 1
  3. Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America
  4. A Student's Guide To History

“If you want more of the same (history about american history), start with these.”

  1. The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies
  2. Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin
  3. Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties
  4. New World Coming: The 1920s And The Making Of Modern America

“If it was the sixties that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. American Treasures: The Secret Efforts to Save the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address
  2. 1969: The Year Everything Changed
  3. The Movement and the Sixties
  4. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Allen Ginsberg
  2. Please Step Back
  3. Hillary Clinton
  4. The Borgias