SOURCE: Collins, Randall. “Searching for the Structure of the Sixties.” Contemporary Sociology 17, no. 6 (November 1988): 729-33.

In the following review of The Sixties, Collins claims that the book suffers from a slow start and an overemphasis on the activities of the Students for a Democratic Society.

What was the meaning of “the sixties”? More precisely, what was the meaning of those intertwined social movements in the United States that, with typical overestimation, we used to call “the Movement”? Todd Gitlin, a core activist in SDS across the decade, is exceptionally well qualified to attempt an answer. Gitlin is now a sociologist, but the book [The Sixties] is not primarily sociology. It is part autobiography and part history of Students for a Democratic Society from its early days of emancipation from its place as the youth branch of an old socialist organization, until its takeover by the violent Weatherman faction...