Research Paper on:
Gitlin's The Sixties Years of Hope

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Sixties, Years of Hope, Gitlin provides an interesting analysis not only of the decade itself, but also of the social and cultural changes which preceded it, in order to show  how the social developments of the 1950s played such an important part in shaping the ideas and ethics of the subsequent generation. He makes the point that the 60s was  not only a time of change, but also a period in which for the first time younger people were able to make their voices heard, not only in protest movements  and political demonstrations but in more subtle ways.  He notes that prior to this period in history, there was little to distinguish the attitudes and feelings of younger people from those who were older, since the  concept of the teenager only came into being in the late 1950s: prior to this, there was simply a transition period from childhood to adulthood which was not marked as  being a significant stage in the individuals development.  The flowering of youth culture, and the recognition that teenagers had a special role to play in society as a whole, provided the vehicle for young people in  the 1960s to comment independently and often forcefully on the way that they regarded their culture, and their country.  He describes the growth of affluence in the 1950s and 1960s as