Sixties counterculture as described by Charles A. Reich, author of the famous 1970 analysis The Greening of America, “originated with the individual and with culture,” and precipitated a “change of consciousness” among American youth.Footnote ¹ In Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll, Robert C. Cottrell keeps faith with Reich's viewpoint, examining in detail the cultural ferment of the decade, with particular focus on the roles played by certain charismatic pioneers in revolutionizing culture and moulding this new youth consciousness. This substantial volume singles out Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey as the figureheads of the counterculture, their trajectories over the course of the decade picked up repeatedly to give a degree of shape to the study. As the title suggests, there is an emphasis on depicting the intertwined evolutions of sexual liberation, rock music and drug use within the youth movement, but the nineteen chapters that make up this study cover a range of other subjects, from “sicknik” stand-up comedy to Haight–Ashbury hippie capitalism, and from the practices of the Diggers to the rise of the alternative media. A literary dimension is also present, with discussion of a number of canonical countercultural texts.

Cottrell is staunchly objective in his approach to detailing the movement, and manages to effectively demonstrate the multifaceted complexity of its (overlapping) cultural and political factions. Numerous voices are drawn upon to bear witness to the divergent and sometimes contradictory nature of countercultural phenomena. On the issue of LSD research in the wake of the sacking of Timothy Leary from Harvard, for instance, an account is given that balances the varied perspectives of the leaders of the burgeoning psychedelic movement, with those of individuals within the academic establishment and members of the mass media. Another example is the treatment given to commune culture, which details several communes individually and takes into account the way such living arrangements could, in some cases, push benevolent motives to breaking point, but in other cases function well, with certain communes persisting well beyond the 1960s.

The rich range of voices Cottrell marshals includes those of prominent politicians, sociologists, literary figures, book reviewers and journalists, yet quotation from such contemporary commentators dominates throughout, and Cottrell's own voice is strikingly absent. It is notable that the introduction to Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll contains no statement of purpose, and the book does not seem to be seeking to provide an original analysis that will challenge either mainstream or academic understandings of the countercultural period. The step back that Cottrell takes here from attempting to apply a coherent narrative overlay to an inherently incoherent series of events is certainly laudable from one point of view, yet the readability of the whole suffers from the resulting lack of continuity. The rigidly chronological approach that has been taken to organizing the content of the volume in the absence of a narrative rationale also affects readability within individual chapters and even at paragraph level, with not infrequently jarring shifts between topics. One also feels that the objectivity that this book seems to claim for itself is undermined, to a degree, by the aforementioned emphasis on four white males as “troubadours for a new American bohemia” (17); very little space, relatively speaking, is given to black power groups and other nonwhite contributors to the movement, and the women's movement's role is elided to less than a page of this 353-page study at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter. Bernadine Dohrn of the notorious Weathermen organization is the only female to receive substantial attention.

There is no lack of studies dealing with this very popular era in US history. Christopher Gair's American Counterculture (2007) is a recent example of a volume that engages with the cultural products of the era in a way that is strongly analytical, and also breaks with the partially discredited narrow periodizing of the counterculture within the decade of the 1960s. For an eyewitness account, one can hardly do better than Todd Gitlin's vibrant and poignant The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1987), or, indeed, Reich's previously mentioned best seller The Greening of America. The main strength of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll within this field is in the thoroughness with which it has been researched. As a source of detailed, vivid and compelling information, particularly with respect to contemporary reactions to the counterculture's challenge to mainstream morality and lifestyles, it will prove of value to academic researchers and casual readers alike.