The Real Sixties: Book Examines The Other New Left Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Book Announcement - May 12, 2002 source - "Revolution in the Air" NEW FROM VERSO: a major interpretative history that will transform our understanding of 1960s movements and spark a vigorous and long-needed debate... REVOLUTION IN THE AIR: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, by Max Elbaum Verso Books "Max Elbaum has given us an incisive and critical history of the Other New Left - the radicals who brought class struggle and Third World liberation to the forefront, looked to the world for allies, and tried their best to work through the dynamics of race *and* class. If you still believe sixties radicalism was nothing more than youthful middle-class confusion or parochial identity politics, then open these pages and dig." -Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination REVOLUTION IN THE AIR is the first in-depth study of the long march of the US New Left after 1968. It tells the story of thousands of dedicated organizers who made the most ambitious post-1968 attempt to combine the energy and creativity of sixties' movements with the working class tenacity of the Old Left. By recovering this under-examined chapter of US radicalism, REVOLUTION IN THE AIR challenges the dominant interpretation of the New Left, which artificially divides the decade into an early "good sixties" and a later "bad sixties." Meticulously researched by Max Elbaum, University of Wisconsin student leader in the late sixties and an activist ever since, REVOLUTION IN THE AIR details the work of the self-identified "New Communist Movement." Through the mid-1970s this new current was the most dynamic and racially integrated trend on the US Left. Thousands of young Americans, radicalized by the Vietnam War and Black Power and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano and Asian American movements, embraced a Third World-oriented version of Marxism. For a decade, these admirers of Mao, Che, Ho Chi Minh and African revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral organized resistance in factories and streets against the "new republican majority" of the Nixon and Ford years. REVOLUTION IN THE AIR probes this experience, including the process through which the movement's ardor to build a new revolutionary vanguard fell afoul of its own dogmatic paradigms. Painstakingly and self-critically, Max Elbaum describes the sectarian sins and failures of the partisans of Third World Marxism while refusing to obscure the resoluteness of their opposition to racism and imperialism. This fresh balance sheet of the late 1960s and 1970s Left is must reading for everyone concerned with the history of US radicalism. It is especially relevant for today's new generation of activists who, like their sixties predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the Left lacks a mass base and is fragmented along racial lines, and when radical theory, strategy and organizational models need a major overhaul. Max Elbaum was a member of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s and a leader of one of the main New Communist Movement organizations during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s he was a founder and editor of the socialist-dialogue magazine CrossRoads. His writings have appeared in the Nation, the US Guardian, Radical History Review, and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. To order, go to www.versobooks.com or ask for this book at your local bookstore "In the many contentious interpretations of the volatile 1960s and their aftermath, one key element is virtually excluded: the independent Marxists who tried to develop a new collective revolutionary project. Although their effort failed - for reasons brilliantly analyzed in this book - those involved continue as key thinkers and activists for social justice. Finally, here is a book that tells their story, and mine." -Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Red Dirt and Outlaw Woman "Here is the first in-depth account of the New Communist Movement of the 1970s, from its roots to its demise, and finally we can understand why it inspired thousands of Americans at the time. Max Elbaum's combination of superlative research and profound honesty sets an example for everyone who wants to understand what makes social justice movements work or not work." -Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez, Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice "By unearthing a hidden history of radical US politics, Max Elbaum has erected an invaluable bridge between the generations. Finally, we have one book that can successfully connect the dots between the battles of the 1960s and the emerging challenges and struggles of the new century." -Van Jones, founder, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights "Revolution in the Air not only brings the late 1960s and '70s alive but analyzes the organizing and strategizing behind all the drama. It gives my 1990s activist generation insight and hope for the future." -Cindy Wiesner, lead organizer for POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrad-05.13.02-13:23:08-8847