During the 1960s, Morris Dickstein claims, America seemed to be at the gates of Eden verging on a new way of experiencing life, art, and culture. In this book, he discusses how America reached the gates and why, in the end, they remained closed. Beginning with Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets of the late 1950s, Dickstein traces the rise of a new sensibility in American thought, writing, and music through lively and incisive analyses of such sixties icons as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, Paul Goodman, Norman O. Brown, and the Rolling Stones. Now, on the 20th anniversary of the book's original publication, Dickstein has written a new introduction, reassessing the period's achievements and failures, and providing a fresh perspective on the ways that the 1960s continue to influence our politics and culture. This book was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a "New York Times Book Review" Notable Book of the Year.