A Hard Rain, Frye Gaillard
A Hard Rain, Frye Gaillard
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A Hard Rain
America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost

Author: Frye Gaillard

Narrator: Chris Abernathy

Unabridged: 25 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/26/2024


Synopsis

"There are many different ways to remember the sixties," Frye Gaillard writes, "and this is mine. As future generations debate the meaning of the decade, I hope to offer a sense of how it felt to have lived it. A Hard Rain is one writer's reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era—one that, for better or worse, lives with us still."

With A Hard Rain, Gaillard gives us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller's eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times: civil rights, black power, women's liberation, the war in Vietnam, and the protests movements against it.

Gaillard also examines the cultural manifestations of change in the era—music, literature, art, religion, and science—and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Berrigan Brothers. As Gaillard remembers these influential people, he weaves together a compelling story about an iconic American decade of change, conflict, and progress.

About Frye Gaillard

Frye Gaillard is the writer-in-residence in the English and history departments at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of thirty books, including With Music and Justice for All: Some Southerners and Their Passions; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, winner of the Gustavus Myers Award; and If I Were a Carpenter, the first independent, book-length study of Habitat for Humanity.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sue on October 21, 2018

The 60s were the defining years of my life. In 1961, I turned 13 so all of my formative teenage years were lived during this tumultuous decade. When I think back on those years and some of the things that happened, I wonder if I am remembering it all correctly. Frye Gaillard's new book was a remind......more

Goodreads review by Marlin on September 10, 2018

A HARD RAIN is a great book, and I’m not using the word “great” in any careless way. The work is so very large in scope, and while the complexity of the history of the 1960s had to have been difficult to manage and shape into an artistic whole, Gaillard manages to not just accomplish it, but do it w......more

Goodreads review by Kenneth on December 16, 2022

This book chronicles the decade of the 1960’s year by year. The author includes all aspects of living in this period. Politics,civil rights, Vietnam, radical movements, music and literature. The author grew up during this period and attended college in the 60’s,so his memories of events are also deta......more

Goodreads review by J on August 29, 2021

It was one of my goals for the summer to read this book. If you are interested in this time period and the intense cultural changes that occurred during this decade (i.e., civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, Woodstock, the space race, assassinations, etc.), you'll really enjoy this. There are......more

Goodreads review by Singles Going on December 20, 2018

Fantastic history with a very welcome personal slant. Gaillard covers some very important topics from the Sixties, Vietnam, Race Relations, Poverty, The Space Program, Presidential Politics, etc. He is able to break these topics down into easily digestible chapters, but more importantly, the book br......more