Try to take the long view of American history and the 1960s will play a trick on your eyes. The years go by, but that electric and cataclysmic decade never gets very far away. Vietnam, the sexual revolution, the Kennedys, the counterculture—all have obsessed the nation’s politics well into the 21st century. If you were planning a run for the White House at any point between the Nixon and Obama presidencies, a safe bet was that you would have to spend at least two months explaining something you did in the years 1967–69.
Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the subject of historian Kevin Boyle’s new book, The Shattering, feels both well worn and painfully relevant. In its pages, Boyle depicts an America whose professed ideals and self-image are mocked by the persistence of racial apartheid and a failed military adventure, a country terrorized by political violence and generally coming apart. Even in pandemic-era America, the traumas of the 60s still hit close to home.
