Destructive Generation; Second Thoughts About the Sixties

382, [2], pages. Notes and Acknowledgments. Index. From back cover - As editors of Ramparts magazine in the late Sixties, Peter Collier and David Horowitz were intimately acquainted with the politics of the New Left. But they knew its tragedies as well, and over time they have come to reject their past radical commitments. Past memoir, part political analysis, Destructive Generation is the compelling story of their intellectual journey through the radical trenches of the Sixties. Including stories of the New Left's most famous (and infamous) personalities and events, Collier and Horowtiz reveal the destructive legacy of the New Left and its consequences in America's politics and culture today. Since publication of the hardcover edition, the authors have written a new chapter, "Baddest: The Life and Times of Huey P. Newton," which appears in print for the first time. Peter Collier (1939-2019) was a distinguished author and editor for over forty years. During that time, he wrote novels, short stories and screenplays, along with best-selling biographies including The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty; The Kennedys: An American Dream; The Fords: An American Epic; and Destructive Generation (all with David Horowitz). David Horowitz is a nationally known author and lifelong civil rights activist. Previously a long time founder of the New Left movement in the 1960s, he has gone on to pen numerous books, including The Politics of Bad Faith, The Art of Political War and Radical Son, his autobiography. As leading New Leftists in the Sixties, Peter Collier and David Horowitz were intimately involved in the radicalism of the day. Later on, they became the first of their generation to publicly reject the objectives of that revolutionary era and point out the cultural chaos it had left behind. Part memoir, part political analysis, part social history, Destructive Generation is the compelling story of their intellectual journey into and out of the radical trenches. Telling stories of the New Left’s most famous (and infamous) personalities and events, Collier and Horowitz reveal the destructive legacy of the Sixties and the way in which that decade continues to cast a long shadow over politics and culture today. When it was first published more than a decade ago, Destructive Generation was a controversial bestseller that some critics compared to Whittaker Chambers’ powerful political testament, Witness. This new edition contains new material which makes this classic work more relevant than ever in our own divided time. The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals. Some who self-identified as "New Left" rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle; however, others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism, such as the New Communist movement (which drew from Maoism) in the United States or the K-Gruppen in the German-speaking world. In the United States, the movement was associated with the anti-war college-campus protest movements, including the Free Speech Movement. First Paperback Edition, First Paperback Printing. …