"Kevin Mattson's book will be welcomed by historians for the complications
it introduces into our understanding of an important period of dissent
and reform and by those who continue to struggle for a more democratic
America for its unsentimental account of their inheritance."-Robert
Westbrook, University of Rochester
"By recovering the political ideas and commitments of this important
group of left intellectuals working as intellectuals, he invites
contemporary intellectuals into a workshop of political change.
At a moment when liberalism again seems exhausted, it is a timely
and important book."-Thomas Bender, New York University
"A novel and revealing view of the early New Left as democratic
intellectuals in search of a public."-Leon Fink, University of Illinois
at Chicago
"Kevin Mattson's new book is a superb and inspiring account of
the sixties as a moment of public intellectual engagement. Mattson
interprets New Left debates as continuous with earlier debates about
the meaning of American democracy and the possibilities of a radical
liberalism. His book is more than a history. For it seeks to remind
us of the strengths and limits of New Left discourse so as to inform
our own democratic engagements in the present."-Jeffrey C. Isaac,
Indiana University
Born in 1966, a generation removed from the counterculture, Kevin
Mattson came of political age in the conservative Reagan era. In
an effort to understand contemporary political ambivalence and the
plight of radicalism today, Mattson looks back to the ideas that
informed the protests, social movements, and activism of the 1960s.
To accomplish its historical reconstruction, the book combines
traditional intellectual biography—including thorough archival
research—with social history to examine a group of intellectuals
whose thinking was crucial in the formulation of New Left political
theory. These include C. Wright Mills, the popular radical sociologist;
Paul Goodman, a practicing Gestalt therapist and anarcho-pacifist;
William Appleman Williams, the historian and famed critic of "American
empire"; Arnold Kaufman, a "radical liberal" who deeply influenced
the thinking of the SDS. The book discusses not only their ideas,
but also their practices, from writing pamphlets and arranging television
debates to forming left-leaning think tanks and organizing teach-ins
protesting the Vietnam War. Mattson argues that it is this political
engagement balanced with a commitment to truth-telling that is lacking
in our own age of postmodern acquiescence.
Challenging the standard interpretation of the New Left as inherently
in conflict with liberalism, Mattson depicts their relationship
as more complicated, pointing to possibilities for a radical liberalism
today. Intellectual and social historians, as well as general readers
either fascinated by the 1960s protest movements or actively seeking
an alternative to our contemporary political malaise, will embrace
Mattson's book and its promise to shed new light on a time period
known for both its intriguing conflicts and its enduring consequences.
