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(More customer reviews)O'Neill's Coming Apart was written in 1969 -- a fact that would seem to disqualify it as cultural history. But in fact the author's closeness to the zeitgeist, as well as his freewheeling willingness to speak his mind and waffle around with mummified standards of "argument" and "evidence" make for a truly good narrative. The author is an extremely smart, well-informed person who writes equally well about politics, diplomacy, the drug scene, Vietnam, and everything else that seemed to define the decade, and does so with a verve that makes you feel like you are there -- or at least there with the author. It is brilliantly informative, and funny at times. Deserves the Parkman Prize if there were any justice in the world.
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William O'Neill's masterly chronicle of the twentieth century's most confounding decade is an immensely readable book that combines wit with learning and seriousness with entertainment. Its emphasis is inevitably on politics, but it offers a brilliant yet balanced portrayal of the New Left, the counterculture, the civil rights movement, the plunge into Vietnam, the crisis in the universities, and the freakier aspects of the popular culture. It has endured as one of the great interpretations of the sixties.
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