Book Review on The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s.
David Farber's "Age of Great Dreams" sketches an arresting picture of what life was like between 1960-1969. Farber places the 1960s in proper historical context, which helps define this turbulent era as the logical extension and culmination of an earlier time that came after the Great Depression, World War II, and before Watergate and women's liberation.
This book starts talking about the beginning of the 1960s and how everyone seemed to have great expectations for better things to come. In the early 1960s, 60 million big, flashy automobiles with powerful engines and such were being sold to the masses. Gas was cheap, divorce was still not a hot topic, just as many people were starting to live in suburbs as people who lived in the inner cities, and people seemed to trust the government and respect their parents.
Then the book starts to go into President John F. Kennedy and how wonderful people thought he was. It is always weird how a lot of these books talk about how popular and great he was, when apparently he was not that well liked until his assassination on November 22, 1963. Sure, Kennedy looked like a movie star and he seemed to have a personality that many people couldn't resist, but that doesn't necessarily make someone a great president. Of course, the book will talk about how Kennedy's election as President was rumored to be a fraud because Kennedy was pals with the Mayor of Chicago. Apparently being friends with Frank Sinatra did not hurt either. Farber goes on to talk about Kennedy's anti-communist plans, the two programs he developed: the Peace Corps and the Special Forces of the U.S. Army, a.k.a., The Green Berets, and the fact the Kennedy was the first televised President. Kennedy seemed to fit to bill as a TV or Movie Star, rather than as President, but by reading this book, it is easy for the reader to think the Kennedy was an incredible man who tried to make a difference.