World Turned Inside Out - (American Thought and Culture) by James Livingston (Hardcover)

About the Book

The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval ...

Book Synopsis

The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices in the 1980s and 90s.

Review Quotes

How refreshing that a distinguished intellectual historian has chosen to emphasize popular culture! . . . Moving beyond the hackneyed arguments between 'sixtophobes' and 'sixtophiles, ' the author argues cogently that what once had been a feminist slogan--the personal is the political--became the enduring legacy of the late-20th-century cultural revolution. Highly recommended.

A major historian offers a scintillating analysis that will help all students of American literature think about why cartoons may prove the great art of our time.

At the heart of James Livingston's new book lies a powerful discovery of correspondence between the world imagined by radical academics and the world experienced in extreme reaches of popular culture, in horror and sci-fi films, and heavy metal rock music. One of the most gifted and original of his generation of American historians, Livingston is at ease parsing the discourses of political economy and cultural theory, and equally so in analyzing music and popular song. An argument on behalf of a number of surprising cases--the nation more liberal after Reagan than before?--the book impressively presents itself as a model of historical thinking and analysis. It's a brilliant piece of work.


If you pick up this book, you will not be bored. And you certainly will not stop arguing.

Livingston presents a stunning display of scholarly discourse, drawing provocative conclusions about where America has been and where it might be going.

To people like myself who came of age during the sixties, the period that followed seemed like a gray epilogue to that colorful decade. But Jim Livingston's book, The World Turned Inside Out, has convinced me otherwise. It's one of the first things I have read that really makes sense of the cultural and political changes of the last forty years--and does so in a vivid, energetic prose. I recommend it to anyone interested in what we Americans are all about.


Written in a sprightly, punchy, and thoroughly enjoyable style that wears its considerable learning lightly, The World Turned Inside Out presents a fair and scrupulous presentation of a panoply of contemporary thought from leading neoconservative thinkers to academic feminists and popular culture.

About the Author

James Livingston is professor of history at Rutgers University. He is the author of, most recently, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 and Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History.