SOURCE: Browning, Frank. “Identity Crisis.” Tikkun 11, no. 5 (September-October 1996): 86-9.

In the following review, Browning compares Twilight of Common Dreams with William Connolly's The Ethos of Pluralization and finds Gitlin's text less theoretical and less practical in terms of its potential to effect social and political change.

The time was spring 1969, the place, Paris, a year after “the events of May” when student revolutionaries had seized the streets in renewed calls for liberty, equality, and fraternity. It was my first journey abroad and I was the guest of a generous revolutionnaire I'd met at an American conference the previous winter. Jean-Jacques was a ruddy, round-cheeked fellow, one of the most eager, gregarious fellows I'd ever met—and just married to a dark-eyed, moody art history graduate. Jean-Jacques came from new but big money, and he arranged for me to stay in his parents' posh (Belgian tapestries on the wall...