Counterculture

Praise

“In Counterculture, Alex Zamalin weaves together so many different threads into a riveting tapestry of stories of people who dared to dream, to see beyond what already exists. These are the often inspiring, often flawed shoulders upon which we all stand and to whom we owe an immense debt of gratitude. Zamalin celebrates the legacy of so many people who dared to ask ‘What if?’ and who left the powerful legacies celebrated here. What do you want your own legacy to be? How will future generations celebrate you?”
—Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the Transition movement and author of From What Is to What If

“For too long, the very word ‘counterculture’ has served as a synonym for mindless self-indulgence. Alex Zamalin’s Counterculture provides a compelling alternative to that dismissive view. With vast learning and literary grace, Zamalin reconstructs a powerful American countercultural tradition, stretching from Walt Whitman and Emma Goldman to Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka—all of them engaged in a morally serious search for a more humane and capacious way of life. Counterculture brings much-needed historical depth to contemporary debates about the meaning of American democracy.”
—Jackson Lears, author of Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street

“Alex Zamalin reminds us that countercultures can be, and throughout history have been, more than a lifestyle choice or a market to exploit: they are platforms for experimentation with radical new ways of being, feeling, thinking, and acting. Counterculture, and the stories of the cultural rebels it tells so well, are the necessary antidote to convention, no matter what its ideology.”
—Stephen Duncombe, author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy