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American Political Life in the 1960's: Change, Recurrence, and Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John Roos
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Extract

When I was an undergraduate I could never understand the reluctance of a historian to analyze in print the happenings of the most recent 20 years. To my mind that reluctance was best exercised with respect to events and societies thousands of years ago. For those ancient societies we might have fragments, clues, a few sketchy outlines. But for the years immediately preceding our own we had literally mountains of material in newspapers, books, periodicals, and of course our own personal memories and on the spot analyses. After reflecting back on my own assessment of things in that year, the spring of 1963, in which I was literally a sophomore, I understand more fully the reluctance of the historian. In understanding the immediate past we are implicitly claiming to understand the present and the future. Almost none of my perspectives about the future, based on my “understanding” of the then recent past, turned out to be correct even in broad outline.

Type
Society
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , October 1972 , pp. 44 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1972

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References

1 Key, V. O. Jr, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (3rd ed., New York: Crowell, 1964), p. 10Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Phillips, Kevin, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969), pp. 25–42Google Scholar.

4 Burnham, Walter Dean, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” American Political Science Review, LIX (12, 1965), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Boorstin, Daniel J., The Decline of Radicalism (New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 120Google Scholar.

6 Goldman, Eric F., The Crucial Decade and After (New York: Vintage, 1960), pp. 344–345Google Scholar.

7 White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961), pp. 377–378Google Scholar.