Before Gary Hart became a U.S. senator from Colorado, before he became a derailed presidential candidate, before he managed the White House campaign of George McGovern in 1972, he became enamored of Robert Kennedy’s political ambitions during 1968.
When Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet, Hart knew that practicing law in Denver and raising a family would not be enough. So he became deeply involved in the fate of the United States in the global arena.
Decades later, in 2007, Hart found himself reminiscing about the 1960s to Tom Brokaw, for the former TV newsman’s new book, “Boom!” emphasizing the lessons learned that contain plenty of relevance for the opening decade of the 21st century. The Hart-Brokaw conversations are well worth reading, as is the rest of the thick manuscript.
As the anchor of NBC Nightly News from 1983-2005, Brokaw became instantly recognizable to millions of television viewers. It seemed obvious from the start that he could not be dismissed as a mere news reader, a pretty boy with a thousand-dollar haircut topping a 25-cent brain.
As an author, Brokaw expanded his influence with “The Greatest Generation,” about what it was like to come of age during the economic depression of the 1930s and its aftermath, World War II. Trying to explain a decade and the generation that lived it could have devolved into generalizations galore and, ultimately, triteness. But Brokaw wrote an intelligent book against the odds.
Now he is back with another book that could have failed miserably, about the much-stereotyped 1960s and early 1970s, an era often character- ized as youngsters who tuned in (to rock music), turned on (to illegal drugs) and dropped out (from the mainstream), countered by oldsters who found such behavior appalling. Such a characterization is hugely oversimplified.
As Brokaw notes, “The Sixties were a time when the nerve endings of the body politic were constantly stimulated with new sensations, but it was also a time of mindless fantasy, groundless arrogance, spiritual awareness, callow youth and misguided elders.”
Brokaw, born in 1940 and raised in South Dakota, experienced some of the 1960s in his private life and chronicled some of it in his public life as a television news reporter. In “Boom!” he mixes his first- hand knowledge with a little philosophizing and giant dollops of interviews with women and men from across just about every spectrum imaginable. The result is a book not only right in its atmospherics but also downright intellectually stimulating.
The organization of the book is somewhat complex. In the first part, Brokaw examines the decade through the reminiscences of those who lived it, dividing their thoughts as cleanly as practical into the issues of race relations, electoral politics, the Vietnam War, gender inequity and cultural upheaval (with an emphasis on popular music).
In the second part, Brokaw tries to pin down the permanent effects of that long-ago decade. He concedes that is a difficult task, given that the book contains so many divergent perspectives.
His own voice is welcome because he has thought deeply about his own evolution as a human being. Many of the other voices come from well- known individuals, too, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, James Webb, Colin Powell, Andrew Young, Jane Pauley, Jeff Greenfield, Gloria Steinem, Judy Collins, Berry Gordy and Jann Wenner.
The book’s attraction is increased by voices that are lesser known or nearly anonymous, such as Charlene Stimley Priester and Ouida Barnett Atkins in the section about race relations.
Priester grew up African-American and relatively privileged in Jackson, Miss., the daughter of well-educated grocery store owners. She became a civil-rights activist, lawyer, wife and mother. Atkins grew up white and privileged in Jackson, the daughter of a lawyer who achieved notoriety as racist Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett. She moved away from Mississippi, but eventually returned and, in an unplanned career shift, ended up teaching African-American students at a segregated Jackson public school.
During his interviews, Brokaw asked questions such as “What seemed so important at the time that seems a little foolish or wrongheaded now? Who were the winners and who were the losers? Can we tell yet?”
Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer in Columbus, MO.
nonfiction
Boom!
Voices of the Sixties — Personal Reflections on the ’60s and Today, by Tom Brokaw, $28.95
