ALA Booklist (Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 CST 2011)

The introduction to this fine series asks the same question that many students ask: Why do we have to learn about history? It's even honest when it says that most young people aren't satisfied with the usual answer about learning lessons from the past. A more engaging idea is that history is about stories, and here the series shines as it provides contemporaneous writing as well as work by scholars that offer plenty of drama d lots of facts, too. The American Counterculture of the 1960s can seem as strange as any other long-ago society. This book investigates its hopeful rise and its depressing end while introducing many of its most famous personalities. The series provides a solid time line, plenty of photographs, sourced quotes, and a list of books and websites for further investigation. Excellent for reports and research.

Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2011)

Archival photographs combine with dense text to provide an introduction to the counterculture movement in the United States. The influence of the Beat Generation and the impact and aftermath of this tumultuous period in American history are also explored for readers. Sidebars featuring news headlines and personal accounts add some immediacy to the historical records. Reading list, timeline, websites. Ind.

School Library Journal (Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2011)

Gr 8-10 While the Vietnam War was raging in Southeast Asia, a war of sorts was raging in the U.S. The 1960s, as Brownell informs readers, was a time of turmoil and change in this country. This dense, text-heavy book discusses the antiwar and Civil Rights movements, hippies, arts and music, student protests, and more, relating how they reshaped American society. Although the book covers a number of important topics, it skims the surface of most of them. The layout, with two columns of text on each page and few pictures, is likely to intimidate our very visual generation of students. Esther Keller, I.S. 278, Marine Park, NY