Product Description

Destructive Generation is the untold story of the 1960s-the tragic consequences of everything-goes hedonism and the destructiveness of revolutionary passion that typified the attitude of many young radicals. Destructive Generation, which critics have compared to The God That Failed and to Whittaker Chambers' Witness, is a modern conservative classic-imperative reading for anyone who wants to understand the New Left and its sad legacy for America.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #519239 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Library Journal
A compilation of memoirs and reportage on the New Left, valuable for its insider insights on New Left strategy and tactics. The authors, celebrated biographers of the Fords, Kennedys, and Rockefellers, primarily use interviews and personal recall to reconstruct an era when moral causes summoned many, but where a willful minority dominated the parapets of activism. Their account might have been enriched with greater psychological analysis of those in the New Left, although their simple analogy of the Left as "like those Japanese soldiers who wandered for years in the jungle, unaware that they had lost the war" may be a more biting explanation. A readable recounting of lost times, lost souls, and lost opportunities. Recommended reading for the politically innocent. Conservative Book Club selection.
- James L. Jablonowski, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Unreal Thing
David Horowitz and Peter Collier would love for the people that read this book to consider nothing outside of their loathsome view of the 60's. And if judged by the reader reviews they have found their partisans.

The New Left as archfiend to Democracy is employed as a synecdoche in H&C's tireless effort to deconstruct the era. Readers that impute H&C's subjective views are in lockstep with present day efforts by the neo con's to annul the extraordinary social achievements of the 60's generation.

This book's transparent viewpoint is another lop sided, subjective hack job by Horowitz who is still trying to prove to his parents that they were wrong and he is right (pun intended).

Reconciliation With Myself
I graduated HS in '64 and attended college during the late 60s. I sood on the side lines in awe of the convulsions in the country. You could not be a 60s product without having some reverence for the committment of the radicals even if you had reservations about their cause.
I saw great things coming by the upheavel in the area of civil rights behind ML King, so I became disposed to believe that other revolutionaries probably possessed the same admirable goals and ambitions for the country. Yet when I looked around I didn't see anything really bad. I saw democracy and open debate, and an unpopular war. (Can any war really be popular even if it is necessary?) I was made to feel guilty about my lack of committment to upheavel and revolution even when my friends were going off to war.
This book, especially because it was written by insiders in the radical movement, has finely lifted that guilt. Had the radicals really achieved their goals, a book such as this would have never been written, and to me that is the strength of our democratic society.
This book will head my gift list for a long time to my friends and family. Yesterday I had to purchase a book for a family friend who was heading overseas to fight the war in Afganistan. I had to find it in the Politics section. Clearly this deserves the status of History. I'm sure this book will inspire him with the knowledge of what he is really fighting for and how vigilant we all must be, whether at home or abroad, all the time, not just during times of open assult on our country.
Russ Gardiner, Alexandria, VA

WOW!
I was growing up in California while this was all going on and somehow I was pretty much oblivious. David Horowitz and Peter Collier are remarkable authors and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read this book. Why isn't it used as a history text in highschools? The drivel that's out there dispensed in all it's liberal bias glory is perverse in it's politically correctness. I just hate it when history is distorted so that we can pretend things happened to acommodate feminist or liberal rhetoric. After reading this book (and others by these authors)I have a deeper understanding of modern US history and appreciate the candor with which the books are written.