Join us Thu/10 at 4:30pm for a special live event hosted by 48hills! Register via Zoom now or join us then: www.tinyurl.com/48hillsTalbots
Authors David Talbot and Margaret Talbot have a new book that looks at the “Second American Revolution” of the 1960s through the stories of some of the most prominent activists who help begin to reshape society.
It’s not a hagiography.
By the Light of Burning Dreams is refreshing for someone like me: I was in grade school when a lot of these events happened, and by the time I was in college, “The Sixties” had become something of a legend. The radicals of the era, who were 20 years or so older than us, became heroes in a way that didn’t ever look at their warts.
But in reality, the likes of Tom Hayden, John Lennon, Bobby Seale, even Cesar Chavez were human beings who made human mistakes that sometimes became political mistakes.
But through it all, they tried, for all the best and possibly not-so-best reasons, to do something really important – and to a great extent, they succeeded.
One of the themes that comes out of the book is the critical – and in early drafts of this history, often ignored — role of women in “The Movement.” The book talks about Heather Booth and the Jane Collective, the folks who ran the first underground feminist abortion clinic. It shows how important Dolores Huerta was to the birth of the United Farm Workers.
The brother-and-sister authors tell the stunning (and again, often overlooked) story of the Native Americans who lead the occupation of Wounded Knee. They look at the Craig Rodwell and the birth of Gay Pride.
It’s inspiring – even more so because it doesn’t turn the seven people whose stories make the spine of the book into Hollywood movie characters.
The authors tell the story as journalists, who seek the truth. The lessons of that era are utterly relevant to today.
I will have the honor of interviewing David and Margaret Thursday/10 at 4:30pm. We will be live on Zoom:
www.tinyurl.com/48hillsTalbots
If you tune in we’ll take questions from the audience.
See you there.
