Sixty-Six

by Barry Levinson

Book Overview

Welcome to Baltimore, 1966, a quiet Eastern city of row houses, blue-collar neighborhoods, and burgeoning suburbs, a place as yet untouched by the upheavals of 1960's America. A place where everything... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076791533X
• ISBN13: 9780767915335
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Soldiers and Hippies

It is a great 60's book as the name implies. Typical run of the mill story of young men and women coming of age during the Vietnam debacle, caught up in their own life's whirl-wind. It is a story of friendship, innocence lost, romance, ambition and lack of it. The most intriguing character, Neil, an iconoclast, goes his own way by enlisting in the army whereas his friends get out of it by producing doctor's letter. But soon he returns to his town wearing a soldier's uniform, AWOL. He never acknowledges why he wanted to enlist or why he came back, a deserter. He is an enigma, an aloof character, a thorn in his friend's side, a train wreck bound to happen. There is an eerie parallel to the current Iraq war and the one which blazed for a decade in South East Asia almost 40 years ago. Politicians start wars on vague notions, send young men/women to fight and then sit back and rationalize. Ben, who is always popping pills, wonders out loud "Why are we concerned about Communism spreading in South East Asia now when we didn't do anything to prevent Eastern Europe fall in Communist hands after WWII." Ben's comment can easily apply to any decade; just replace the word communism with dictatorship. More than anything it is a book of friendship, camaraderie among men, the kinship which is hard to describe. It must be an autobiography.

"Thanx for the memories"

When he talked a bout the PaperMate grey and pick retractable pen, he got me! So much is familiar. Born and bred in NYC, all of this is migratable. I sat by the pool and had it read to me and well, I just laughed and giggled. With the world in its way, the Republican convention underway ... terror threats on NYC bridges and public transportation ... it's remarkable to say this novel was "fantasy". But, there you have it in today's world. When my teenaged son gets his head out of online poker and IMing, I will encourage him to read through this coming of age story ... it is so wonderfully innocent!

I loved it!

Maybe it's the Baltimore nostalgia, or maybe it's the message that there's something awaiting everyone beyond what we see when we're young, but I really got into this story. Bobby Shine and his male "diner" buddies bring back the ambivilance we felt between our friends the soldiers and our friends the hippies during the Vietnam War years. The novel awakens long lost memories of such things as coddies, peppermint sticks in lemons, the Flower Mart, Read's drug stores, dates at Mandel's, hanging out in a diner. Having close buddies and a welcoming place such as the diner to discuss personal problems and accomplishments is basic to this story. Friendship reigns supreme. Nothing quite matches the freedom and exhuberance of being young. Even with its painful times. This story captures it all. Read it.

Just plain wonderful!

Barry Levinson's "Sixty-Six" is a marvelous paean to friendship, male bonding and Baltimore---perhaps "Son of Diner."At least somewhat autobiographical, narrator Bobby Shine guides the reader thru the lives of a group that hangs at the Hilltop Diner. In their early twenties, they cling to their past as they move into adulthood and responsibility. Against a background of change, the crew segues from the fifties rituals to the uncertainty of the sixties. The cultural landscape is shifting and the friends are caught up in the unexpected changes.The story is replete with wonderful digressions to past events that forged their camaraderie. It is told in a relaxed conversational style with magnificent dialogue full of wit, irony, sarcasm and humor. You feel like you are sitting in the diner with them.Filled with elation and melancholy, laughter and tears, opportunities lost and found, "Sixty-Six" is both funny and sad---and always poignant.