We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against

by Nicholas von Hoffman

Book Overview

Books about the sixties have proliferated in recent years, but none has surpassed Nicholas von Hoffman's classic account of the 1960s counter-culture in San Francisco. "In the summer of 1967," he writes, "youth drew attention to itself by clustering in large numbers in most major American cities, where they broke the narcotics laws proudly, publicly, and defiantly. At the same time, they enunciated a different social philosophy and a new politics,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0929587065
• ISBN13: 9780929587066
• Release Date: December 1988
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Length: 279 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

THIS IS THE BEST BOOK ABOUT THE 60S AND ITS A TRUE STORY

this is the best book about the 60s and the haight ashbury ever writen i should know im white rabbitt

Was there... did that

As one of the lead characters in this story, I was quite taken with the veracity of my performance. Nick did an amazing amount of leg work over the course of the summer, based initially on people I introduced him to. He pursued many paths of interest and covered a substantial amount of territory. The narrative, as described elsewhere, had as much structure as the situation itself allowed, which was really very little. The Haight-Ashbury was about things happening. Things, in this milieu, were not particularly planned, beyond setting a temporal framework and attempting to provide events for the framework, or just letting the events take over and flow where they would. As a followup, Stuart Loomis and the White Rabbit have recently been in contact by email as a result of a documentary on the period broadcast on PBS. Kelly avoided Vietnam and spent many years as a roady for rock and roll bands. He disappeared from view in the early eighties. Nick himself has spent a number of years recently working on plays for the stage, after a long successful career at the Washington Post. The White Rabbit gave up on the idea of pursuing a medical career and is a senior executive in Information Technology.

The Real Thing

This is the book that really explains what went on in San Francisco in 67. Von Hoffman does a wonderful job of telling the scene how it was. Ifyou want to understand hippies of the 60's read this book. It takes a different approach of the scene by not foccussing on anything, but covers everything. Von Hoffman did what most writers of the Acid era did or could not do; he was unbiased. The only down side was the strange organization. It had no chapters or real structure. Despite that fact, the book was very fluid.