Reclaiming Democracy: The Sixties in Politics and Memory

By Meta Mendel-Reyes

Book Overview

Meta Mendel-Reyes provides a critical look at our fascination with the sixties, discusses the ways in which democratic participation was at the heart of sixties politics, and explores the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415911346
• ISBN13: 9780415911344
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Nice take on democracy

The author provides a rich background on the 60s and her take on misinterpretations of the period. She sees negative reference and consideration of the 60s as harmful. Her premise is important, but her greater offering is her passion and enthusiasm to criticize the little democracy we have in more contemporary times. What she says is that we have today is more like "spectator democracy," which is hard to disagree with when you're reading a compelling book arguing for participatory measures in a virtually free society.

Compelling analysis and great background, but too short

Meta Mendel-Reyes' book is a great, quick read both for those who experienced and those who are ignorant of what the '60s meant.As someone born in the late '70s, my information on the political activism of the '60s a pastiche of stories my parents told me and skimpy news report and history textbook summaries, so I learned a lot about what went on and what the SDS and other groups meant to so many people.Mendel-Reyes also does a good job of analyzing what was perhaps America's most exciting foray into participatory democracy since the Revolution with a political scientist's eye. She helps the reader to understand how student activism in the '60s is a real-world test of democracy in perhaps its rawest form, with the accomanying travails and benefits.By relating the events to the present day, Mendel-Reyes also helps us to understand what impact the events of the '60s have on the present and how participatory movements are popping up in other, less visible ways. ! Her comments on the tendency of conservative leaders such as Speaker Gingrich to bash the '60s with no data to back up their claims is dead on, but also strike this reader as a bit too obviously partisan and not nearly as scholarly as the rest of the book.I also wish the book was a bit longer - additional space devoted to the angles of political theory and how the events of the '60s play out today could have made the book even stronger.Overall, however, "Reclaiming Democracy" is a great read on many levels: as a history, as an analysis of the '60s, as a scholarly comment upon democracy in theory and in practice, and as a look into what the events and ideals of the '60s mean today.-Ben FritzReviewer's confession: As a student at Swarthmore College who has taken a class with Meta, I am friendly with her.