Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, Western Europe's "Golden Age" (Eric Hobsbawm), a new youth consciousness emerged, which gave this period its distinctive character. Offering rich and new material, this volume moves beyond the easy conflation of youth culture and "Americanization" and instead sets out to show, for the first time, how international developments fused with national traditions to produce specific youth cultures that became the leading trendsetters of emergent post-industrial Western societies. It presents a multi-faceted portrait of European youth cultures, colored by differences in gender, class, and education, and points out the tension between emerging consumerism and growing politicisation, succinctly expressed by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1967 pairing of "Marx and Coca-Cola."

Axel Schildt is Professor of History at the university of Hamburg and Director of the Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg.

Detlef Siegfried is Associate Professor of Contemporary German History at the University of Copenhagen and Research Fellow at the Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg.

"...This collection...will be extremely helpful for all those researching and teaching socio-political change in Europe during and after the 1960s. It is particularly welcome as the book's focus on West Germany and Scandinavia covers precisely the most significant geographical omission in Arthur Marwick's The Sixties...a fascinating and innovative collection. It successfully conveys the competing and - at times - complementary pressures of political radicalization and the new consumerism during this stressful and exhilarating period of change."   ·  Journal of Contemporary History

"...undergraduates who purchase this book will not sell it back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. It is thoroughly readable and the translations and writings of non-native English speakers flow very well. It is also engaging and thought-provoking, with something to offer everyone, from the college student activist to the expert on youth culture and rebellion...In an impressive display of thematic unity for an edited volume, the authors' contributions are in dialogue with one another...the volume is one of the year's best books...By demonstrating the varying aspects of youth movements in different national settings, this volume takes the reader far beyond the parts of its whole."  · H-German