Although the 1960s are long past, events and influences of that turbulent era continue to color American culture. Looking back, the early sixties seem as flat and gray as the old, grainy black-and-white comedy shows still showing on cable TV. High school fashion for girls included bobbed hair, pleated skirts, and saddle shoes. Clean-cut boys wore crew cuts, button-down sweaters, and penny loafers—some even wore ties to college classes. A Friday night date might have been a movie, a cruise in the family automobile, and a hamburger at a local soda shop eaten while listening to saccharine-sweet crooners such as Frankie Avalon on the jukebox.

A Culture Transformed

Within a relatively short span of ten years, America became almost unrecognizable from that black-and-white picture. By 1970 the United States experienced a cultural transformation that was truly mind-boggling—even to those who lived...