The Transatlantic Sixties

... with Grzegorz Kosc

1. »Books that the world does not need to read.« Why is your book different?

»The Transatlantic Sixties« is a must read for those who may associate the 1960s with the culture and society of the United States alone and who may believe that the decade brought parallel but largely independent developments in several nations of the West. It foregrounds cultural and intellectual transnational crosscurrents in the history of the era.

2. What new perspective does your book provide?

Collecting essays by scholars in American Studies of various specializations based in European countries, this book offers multiple perspectives on the 1960s and emphasizes the decade's international character. The African American civil rights movement, for instance, is shown to have inspired German social movements, and Danish feminists are described as having developed and adapted ideas from their political counterparts in New York City and Paris, as well as from their own experience. Each essay details transnational debates, demonstrations or developments in the 1960s and in our cultural memory of the era.

3. How does your book influence contemporary research within this area of focus?

The book's value lies in the individual essays and their collective scope and influence within their disciplines: all the contributors present the results of original research and extend the conversation in which scholars on both sides of the Atlantic are engaged in order to demonstrate and test transatlantic exchanges in and about the 1960s.

4. Who would you want to discuss your book with?

Scholars from different fields, especially history, literature, politics, sociology and media and film studies, those who participated in or witnessed some of the events discussed in the book, and – of course – with students and other young people from Europe and North America who are interested in how knowledge of the past can help to understand the present and shape the future.

5. Describe your book in one sentence:

This book explores the 1960s as a distinctive period also because of the extensive transatlantic alliances and networks that were then formed.