A personal account of one writer’s reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era
FRYE GAILLARD is a former writer-in-residence in the English and history departments at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of thirty books, including With Music and Justice for All: Some Southerners and Their Passions; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, winner of the Gustavus Myers Award; and A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s (Georgia), an NPR best book of 2018. He lives in Mobile, Alabama.
A totally absorbing read! Frye Gaillard takes us there and makes it
all so real that we forget we're reading. Older readers will feel
young, uncertain, and idealistic again. Younger readers will hope
to find the courage of the 1960s — in politics, artistic
expression, science — to improve the lot of all humankind on this
precious earth. Gaillard's A Hard Rain is worthy of the best
literary prizes our country can bestow.
*author of Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance*
A child of the Sixties and one of the leading civil-rights
reporters of his generation, Frye Gaillard has given us a riveting
tour along what he calls the fine line between history and
journalism. As a reporter, he has witnessed a great deal and
interviewed many of the key figures of the decade that shaped
America’s future while breaking its heart. As a scholar, he has
read widely and thought deeply about our nation’s halting pursuit
of justice and mercy for all. A Hard Rain is essential reading for
a time when an American president has willfully ignored the
hard-earned lessons from our passage through the most tumultuous
decade of social change since the Civil War.
*former executive editor of The New York Times*
The Sixties had it all — social movements and space exploration,
once-in-a-generation musicians and once-in-a-lifetime martyrs, a
Cold War and a hot one, too. A Hard Rain beautifully ties it all
together in poetic prose that makes the pain and pleasure, tragedy
and triumph of these tumultuous years come alive. Whether you came
of age during the Sixties like author Frye Gaillard or were born
after it like me, A Hard Rain is the new starting point for anyone
who wants to understand the most impactful decade of the 20th
century.
*author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in
Alabama’s Black Belt*
Frye Gaillard has long been one of the South’s most imaginative
popular historians, and his remarkable gift for combining history
and memory has never been more apparent than in his new book on the
1960s, A Hard Rain. Of the many books that have tried to capture
the spirit and meaning of this tumultuous decade, A Hard Rain is
surely among the best. Gaillard’s mastery of the art of
storytelling, along with his unerring accuracy in characterizing
the era’s leading political and cultural figures, turns his
personal reflections into compelling and insightful history.
*author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial
Justice*
A Hard Rain is a smart, readable survey, at once personal and
universal, of a decade that is still under debate today. Taking a
broadly synoptic view, Frye Gaillard focuses on small moments that
yielded huge effects. The battle against racial division quickly
emerges as a major theme in Gaillard's narrative, with mileposts
such as Thurgood Marshall's key role in Supreme Court decisions
about how it wasn't enough simply not to segregate; integration was
required, too. An illuminating, you-are-there view of events on the
ground in the turbulent 1960s.
*Kirkus Reviews*
I’m swept away by how comprehensive A Hard Rain is, by its
anecdotal style, its readability, the range of topics, ambition of
the undertaking, and emotionality and intellectual integrity of the
author. There has been a lot of attention these last few years to
the 1960s as any number of fiftieth anniversaries have been
celebrated. But these have been like drum solos. Frye Gaillard’s
book, with its mixture of the personal and scholarly, with its
weaving together of so many stories, is simply symphonic. This is
great work.
*author and award-winning editor and founder of Heyday and News
from Native California*
An enlightening picture of America at a historic juncture.
*Publishers Weekly Starred Review*
As a history, A Hard Rain is exhaustive, recounting not only
well-known events such as the Kennedy assassinations and the March
on Washington but also dozens of less publicized incidents that
spoke to the national mood. Frye Gaillard excels at weaving his own
experiences of the decade without distracting from the overall
narrative, and his research brings long-forgotten events to the
fore. A full-scale, flowing journey through the decade.
*Library Journal*
A Hard Rain traces the history of the raucous decade in which Frye
Gaillard and this writer both grew up. The resulting work is one of
those culmination-of-a-life's-work books most non-fiction writers
can only dream about. The book is a powerful, engaging mix of
concise, hard reporting with a strong narrative thrust and a
personal touch. It's also a great read, in Gaillard's trademark
knowledgeable but casual, nearly conversational style. A
jaw-dropping popular history of the 1960s.
*Creative Loafing*
The great strength of A Hard Rain is that the author deftly weaves
together a narrative of people — some well-known and some less so —
and their recollections. A Hard Rain has a broad sweep. It is
impressive that the author was able to treat so many topics and
details while maintaining a highly readable story. The synthesis
here is superb. For those seeking to revisit a formative time in
their life, or for others looking for an introduction to a hinge
point of history, this is a terrific book.
*Washington Independent Review of Books*
A Hard Rain vividly conveys the ethical and spiritual dimensions of
hope, possibility, and innocence lost during this change-filled
decade. An impressive book of cultural criticism.
*Spirituality & Practice*
If you lived through the 1960s and still don’t have a handle on
that kaleidoscopic era, or if you’ve heard about the wacky Sixties
and want to understand them, then run, don’t walk, to your nearest
bookseller and buy A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of
Hope, Possibility and Innocence Lost.
*Martha’s Vineyard Times*
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