The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s - Hardcover

G. Calvin Mackenzie is the Goldfarb Family Professor of Government at Colby College, and has written or edited more than a dozen books on American government and public policy. A Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, he holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and was the John Adams Fellow at the Institute for United States Studies in London. He was also a soldier with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam

Robert Weisbrot is the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Colby College. He is the author of numerous books, including Freedom Bound: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Maximum Danger: Kennedy, the Missiles, and the Crisis of American Confidence.

“This is a terrific and timely book—a riveting narrative of one of the most fascinating decades in American history, as well as a brilliantly insightful account of the forces that came together to produce enduring change.”
—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals

“Exhilarating...creative, compelling, and convincing.... [W]e would do well to heed Weisbrot and Mackenzie’s lively and engaging reconstruction of the old political playing field where, for one brief, shining moment, other possibilities seemed imminent.”
—BookForum

“[S]hould be required reading for Democracts who are thinking of what they can achieve if they win the white House and large Congressional majorities this November.”
—The New York Observer

“Mackenzie and Weisbrot...provide insightful and well-argued analysis of the 1960s social, economic, and political dynamics that opened both the public and the government to great and necessary social legislation.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The Liberal Hour is the most important contribution to our understanding of ourselves and our country in many years because Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot allow us to view the 1960s whole and in all of its complexity. This gracefully written and wisely argued account focuses not simply on what we have come to see as “The Sixties”—the counter-culture, the protest movements, the music, and the anger—but also and primarily on the creative work by politicians in Washington who put into law a remarkable array of social, economic and environmental reforms that are still with us. This is a book about our past that should affect our future.”
—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Souled Out and Why Americans Hate Politics

“Apart from a good, sturdy narrative history, there are useful lessons here for political activists and progressives.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Informed political history...Strongly recommended.”
—Library Journal

“Americans have been trying to understand the 1960s ever since they happened— possibly even earlier. To this day, the decade serves as a rallying cry to those who blindly suppress its memory, or nearly as blindly, idealize it beyond recognition. With command and eloquence, The Liberal Hour explains what really happened, probing the inner dynamics of the immense changes wrought by the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, and the aftershocks we live with to this day.”
—Ted Widmer, author of Ark of the Liberties: America and the World