The political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s has become a subject blighted by misconceptions and stereotypes. To many, it is synonymous with widespread drug abuse, failed social experiments, and general irresponsibility. Few people remember that many of the freedoms and rights Americans enjoy today are the direct result of those who defied the established order during this tumultuous period. It was a period that challenged both mainstream and elite Americans notions of how politics and society should function. In Generation on Fire, the third volume of Jeff Kisseloff’s trilogy of oral histories, witnesses speak about their motives and actions during the 1960s through the present.

Kisseloff provides an eclectic and highly personal account of the political activity of the decade, as told by those individuals who led the resistance on numerous fronts including civil rights, the antiwar movement, women’s liberation, gay rights, the counterculture, as well as in the world of art, music and even sports. Among other things, the book offers firsthand accounts of what it was like to face a mob’s wrath in the civil rights movement, be on trial with the Chicago Eight, survive the jungles of Vietnam, make a new life on a commune in Vermont and history on a stage in Woodstock, and finally to see a loved one cut down by a bullet at Kent State. Generation on Fire brings the 1960s alive again, but its stunning, sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious stories of often startling courage and independent thinking, illuminate a generation’s focus on social responsibility, an issue as relevant today as it was some forty years ago.

For a list and brief description of the book's participants, click here.

"Deeply moving and complex, it will come as a revelation about an era too often reduced to caricature."--Maurice Isserman, author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington

Jeff Kisseloff is the author of two previous works of oral history, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan From the 1890s to World War II and The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961. He has also written two books on baseball and is writing a book on the Alger Hiss case. In 1970, he led a rebellion at his summer camp on behalf of Third World people. Alas, it failed to spread beyond the mess hall. He lives in New Paltz, New York with his wife and daughter.