American Countercultures
Date of Review:
09/01/2009Published Work:
American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. HistoryReviewer:
John KendallSource:
Emerald Reference ReviewsReview Excerpt:
In point of comprehensiveness, American Countercultures is impressive. I played my usual game with reference books of "testing it out": this involves checking it against a sample list of 20 random items. It did very well. In addition, the book constantly throws up revelations which are new—at least to me. I did not know that the actor Peter Coyote had an alternative life ("a Zen Buddhist first and actor second") or that the epitome of fifties "cool," Jack Kerouac, was "increasingly defined by his conservative political beliefs and his Catholicism in later years." Some entries are decidedly esoteric: How many people could give an off-the-cuff account of Generation X, Generation Y, MC5, Be-Ins, CBGB, Eckankar, Omphalism, Phish, Santeria, Ska, and Zines. It is obvious that alternative lifestyles is not a plain-language subject; they have a vocabulary all their own. . . .
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