Pop Dreams: Music, Movies, and the Media in the American 1960's

This little book could easily have been a fully fledged tome. Loss surveys the popular American media in the 1960s. He shows how it echoed and in turn fed back on the burning issues of the times. The Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. There is discussion of politics at the Federal level, with the actions of US Presidents being key events. But Loss manages to tie this all into a narrative that also encompasses analysis of the rock and roll scene and the counterculture. The book is aimed at an undergraduate or high school reader, as a quick synopsis of trends that Loss traces back to 1945 and the emergence of the US from the Second World War. He hopes to whet the reader's appetite for more detailed reading of these vast topics.