The Other Side of the Sixties

Comprehensive, dispassionate, and useful. ~David Frum, Manhattan Institute

A fascinating account of a too long overlooked aspect of the 1960s: the counterattack of AmericaÆs young conservatives who battled the left courageously and ultimately won the war. ~William A. Rusher, Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute

Professor AndrewÆs book fills a gaping hole in the social/political history of the sixties. He tells us now of the spirited movement of young people that peaked in the election of Ronald Reagan. ~William F. Buckley Jr.

There are good histories of post-WW II conservative thought such as George H. NashÆs The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, since 1945 (CH, Oct Æ76), but there has long been a need for more serious scholarship on postwar American conservative movements. Andrew (history, Franklin & Marshall College) expertly fills this need for one movementùYoung Americans for Freedomùwhich, as he points out, was the most controversial youth movement in US politics in the first half of the 1960Æsà.Andrew is especially sharp in providing a rewarding look inside YAF in these years, explaining its organizational dynamics, its leadership and their interpersonal conflicts, and the factional struggles over distinguishing YAF from both liberal Republicans and John Birchers. ~Choice

Andrew makes a significant contribution to sixtiesÆ historiography by refocusing scholarly and public attention on the activities of conservative youth during that tumultuous decade. ~Mary C. Brennan, author of Turning Right in the Sixties