SOURCE: ETC. Review of The Twilight of Common Dreams, by Todd Gitlin. ETC. 53, no. 4 (winter 1996-97): 472-73.

In the following review, the critic finds that The Twilight of Common Dreams offers “sensible suggestions” to both those on the Left and the Right.

Can Whites, Blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Gays, Jews, Christians, Feminists, Fundamentalists, and a host of other identity category groups get along with each other and work toward achieving justice for all? Maybe, says Todd Gitlin, a president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the Sixties, a professor of sociology at Berkeley for 16 years, and the author of The Twilight of Common Dreams. This book reveals Gitlin's deep disappointment with the direction America's political Left has taken since the Sixties.

Gitlin believes that the “Left,” which once stood for universal values, has come to be identified with the special interests of distinct “cultures...