The Bomb Throwers

In today's New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews Peter Richardson's A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America. While the review is generally favorable, Garner laments a lack of context: Where, he wonders, is Tom Paine and the history of dissident pamphleteering in America? Where is the general cultural freak-out of the Sixties? And, where oh where is the Berkeley Barb? (To be fair, the Barb is probably a book in itself.) In the end, Garner deems the book "appealing if choppy."

Richardson gave us an appealingly adapted (and not at all choppy) excerpt from his book for our current issue, tracking the deep Berkeley roots of Ramparts' editorial staff.  See "Radical Slick," which opens our new Arts and Letters Section. 

We also caught up with former Ramparts staffer/Berkeley alum Jerelle Kraus, who was in charge of the art in the Times's Op-Ed section. Her book is called All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't). Like Richardson's work, it ties into the Gonzo spirit of the alternative press -- albeit, in this case, from within the halls of the vaunted and oh-so-mainstream Times.

Comments

[twitter.com/patojoseph]

In a follow-up review in the Times, Jack Shafer says A Bomb in Every Issue satisfies on every level and whets the appetite for a Ramparts anthology.

[Anthony St. John '63]

Another book you should add to your reading list is “Made In California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000,” published by LACMA and UC Press, divided into five twenty-year sections with essays on the history of each era illustrated with over a thousand cultural artifacts using painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs and film relevant to each era that provide excellent historical perspectives on such subjects as the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and the resultant multicultural California of the 1980s and 1990s.

Social and political advancements stimulated by Berkeley activism are discussed in the “Tremors in Paradise, 1960-80” chapter, which produced advancements in civil rights, diversity and gender equity as documented in “Many Californias, 1980-2000.”

The only question now is where do we go from here, and how do we choose to make the right things happen? The 1960s and 1970s produced some very excellent role models and methods for activism needed to make the right things happen again in this new millennium, during this chaotic time when it is once again most imperative to change the course of history in order to protect, preserve and advance humanity.

First, it’s time to upgrade the culture described in Charles Burress’s “Work in Progress” cover story, described by author Gray Brechin “[Berkeley] is today a very different place, the faculty and students so quiescent that I sometimes wonder what sedative has been put in the water.”

As noted in the Sep/Oct 2006 CALIFORNIA “Global Warning” issue in the “Can we adapt in time?” article, our prefrontal cortex is not yet evolved enough to deal with long-term trends because we have only needed to respond to immediate dangers, up until this new age of accelerating climate changes that is.

So the question is, How Do We Adapt In Time?