The Shattering

America in the 1960s

By: Kevin Boyle

Narrated by: Jonathan Yen

Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

On July 4, 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighborhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a confident vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, social violence, and the blowback of a "silent majority" shredded the American fabric.

Covering the late 1950s through the early 1970s, The Shattering focuses on the period's fierce conflicts over race, sex, and war. The civil rights movement develops from the grassroots activism of Montgomery and the sit-ins, through the violence of Birmingham and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the frustrations of King's Chicago campaign, a rising Black nationalism, and the Nixon-era politics of busing and the Supreme Court.

Kevin Boyle captures the inspiring and brutal events of this passionate time with a remarkable empathy that restores the humanity of those making this history. Often they are everyday people like Elizabeth Eckford, enduring a hostile crowd outside her newly integrated high school in Little Rock, or Estelle Griswold, welcoming her arrest for dispensing birth control information in a Connecticut town.

©2021 Kevin Boyle (P)2021 Tantor

The insights of this period are enlightening

Though I am not a history buff, I loved this book. It was as good as any thriller!

The 1960’s unpacked sheds light on today’s troubles

I started high school in the early 60’s in a privileged but not wealthy family in a small all white town in southeastern Missouri sheltered from the black struggle in the south, finished college in the late 60’s, married in 72 and became a father in 73 having voted for Nixon in his first term because he used a Bob Dylan song in a campaign ad, the only time in my life I have voted Republican.
The Shattering made clear for me what I only remembered from back then as highlighted events and peoples names.
And as advertised it helped draw important historical parallels from the 1960’s to our current cultural and political realities today.
I feel more hope for our future having been freshly reminded of my past.
Thanks to professor Boyle.

Riveting review of the 60s

Doesn’t cover everything and doesn’t try, but captures the root causes and the core outcomes of the era.