Counterculture

January 1, 2025

This collection of microhistories on well-known 20th-century U.S. cultural movements uses the idea of counterculture, defined in this book as movements in which values are outside and oppositional to mainstream norms and whose practices fundamentally reject what is socially respectable. Zamalin (Africana studies and political science, Rutgers Univ.; Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility) starts with Walt Whitman and the transcendental communes and moves to activist Emma Goldman, anarchists, New York Bohemians, the Beat Generation, the 1960s counterculture, the Black Arts Movement, and the fine art scene of 1980s New York with its connection to early hip-hop artists. Zamalin is clear that this isn't meant to be an exhaustive study of countercultures; the book follows the spread of these movements into the larger world, but its core focus is on Manhattan. It doesn't mention digital countercultures or ones that are part of the current climate, and it appears that most of the movements addressed in the book were assimilated by the larger culture. Zamalin approaches these countercultures from multiple perspectives so that his book is not only the white, male, heteronormative history of the movements but a more inclusive account. VERDICT A good introduction to the process of culture making in the 20th century.--John Rodzvilla

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