SAN FRANCISCO IN THE 60S (Paperback, New edition)

A cutting edge series of books on cult cities London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, captures the key moments of the sixties through key images, accompanied by a succinct narrative by film critic George Perry. With the passing of the twentieth century into history, the 1960s can be confirmed as one of its most crucial decades, an era of unprecedented social and cultural revolution. Across the world, barriers collapsed, new freedoms were claimed and an explosion of creative energy electrified the arts, fashion, politics and general lifestyles, often with accompanying anguish. Certain world cities - San Francisco included - were, in their very different ways, at the vanguard of this global ferment. The series of books reveals the arts, fashions, passions, people and events in each of these cities during this extraordinary era, by means of candid, striking images by contemporary photographers. The selection has been made with the advantage of hindsight, and offers both insights and surprises. Peace, love and hard drugs were the order of the day in San Francisco in the 60s. There was a summer of love and flower power was in the ascendant, but the spell was broken by the troubles of 1968 and the eruption of violence at Berkeley where the free speech campaign had begun four years earlier. An earthquake-prone San Francisco trembled, but carried on as a leader of popular taste, delivering the music of Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, the graphics of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton and the literature of Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsburg.