has opted for a chronological scheme, keyed to salient figures, that both spotlights & questions the decade's events: John Lewis (Sitting In '60); James Farmer (Freedom Riding '61); Tom Hayden (Manifesto Writing '62), Bayard Rustin (Marching to Washington '63); Joseph Rauh Jr. (Organizing Mississippi '64); Clark Kerr (Igniting Berkeley '64); Paul Williams (Exploding Watts '65); Stokely Carmichael (Blackening Power '66); Allard Loewenstein (Dumping Johnson '67); Jerry Rubin (Assaulting Chicago '68) & two unknowns representing the Weathermen ('69) & Kent State ('70). On the plus side, almost every development is somehow fitted in & Viorst does attempt a balanced assessment of such controversial personalities as Rustin, Carmichael & Martin Luther King. (His introductory chapter on 'the other leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, community-organizer--& sleeping car porter--E.D. Nixon, is perhaps his best). On the debit side, he's a pappy, colorless writer with no knack for portraying individuals. His sections on Allen Ginsberg & Jerry Rubin are obtuse & humorless. Seldom do we get a sense of the decade's intense moral concern. But in the absence of a bona fide history of even the civil rights movement, this will do to clue in latecomers & refresh fading memories.--Kirkus.

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