Altered States: America Since the Sixties

Black, Jeremy

ISBN 10: 1861892888 / ISBN 13: 9781861892881

Published by Reaktion Books, London, 2006

About this Item

8vo.

Seller Inventory # 161478

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Altered States: America Since the Sixties
• Publisher: Reaktion Books, London
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1861892888
• ISBN 13: 9781861892881
• Binding: Softcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

As the home of nearly 300 million people spread over approximately 3.7 million square miles of earth, the United States poses a monumental challenge to all who try to grapple with its rich and immensely complex physical and social geography. Acclaimed historian Jeremy Black tackles this challenge through a literal and metaphorical road trip across America’s physical and historical landscapes, analysing the ways that events in American history and culture since 1960 have remade the geography and demographics of America.
Black works from the premise that the United States is a continent pretending to be a country. He examines the cultural clashes - and the tense harmony - between the numerous regional cultures uneasily contained within the United States' wide bounds. Suburban sprawl, the triumph of consumerism, the war over health care, immigration and Christian evangelicalism all play a part in these pages, as well as the tug of war within us government politics, and the alternating rise and fall of individualism and conformity. Black also has some telling new reflections on America's role abroad from Nixon’s Vietnam to Bush Junior’s Iraq.
In Altered States, Black deftly reveals less examined aspects of American culture as they are manifested in the diverse peoples and landscapes that stretch from coast to coast.

About the Author

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. One of Britain’s leading military historians, he has written over eighty books, including: Maps and Politics (Reaktion, 1996), Why Wars Happen (Reaktion, 1998), Britain since the Seventies (Reaktion, 2004), War since 1945 (Reaktion, 2004), Altered States: America since the Sixties (2004), all published by Reaktion.