Seeds of the Sixties

In this deft and accessible slice of intellectual history, the authors, American scholars at Lund University in Sweden, profile 15 people who helped transform public discourse in the 1950s, carving out ``breathing space'' for the ferment to follow. Their choices, in five categories, are solidly representative: critics of mass society C. Wright Mills and Erich Fromm; early environmentalists Lewis Mumford and Rachel Carson; intellectual innovators Herbert Marcuse and Margaret Mead; cultural pioneers Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin; political agitators Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King. The authors combine biography with analysis for each of their profiles, and conclude thoughtfully by suggesting the different ways in which the ideas and actions of their subjects influenced the days--and the decade--ahead. (Mar.)