The Days of the Bitter End

by Jack Engelhard

Book Overview

Jack Engelhard's "The Days of the Bitter End" may well be the definitive word on the 1960s. This is a landmark book, masterfully evocative. Engelhard once again proves himself to be a truly great... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1771431032
• ISBN13: 9781771431033
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Dayray Literary Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

DAYS OF THE BITTER END---A PROPHECY...

I found myself reading the pages of this book in reverent awe. This was how it all began....this was the launch. Yes, the Beat Generation had been around since The Bomb. It was all over they said....live it up while you can. But then something happened. It started in the Greenwich Village of the Early Sixties...in the Mad Abandon so charcteristic of the cafes and the scene on Bleecker Street. Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby, Lennie Bruce...started doing their thing...with gusto. An within ten years they had stood this Nation on its ear. It was more than music....it was a way of life. Shove America's sins in its nose....pull down the hypocritical suburbanites and their smug satisfaction....redesign America....say what you feel...do what you feel....DON'T DO what you DON'T feel.... It was a chilling vision for the older generation....yet those who preached it and sang it became the idols of my generation.... Jack Engelhard, the tough-minded journalist, veteran of the police and city hall beats, yet also a wandering immigrant soul so grateful for a home where you could raise your voice on the streets, was there. He saw it...He lived it...and in DAYS THE BITTER END he tells it. Whether your soul cries out to relive from whence we came, or whether you want a first hand account of how it REALLY WAS back then...this book is for you. Excitement....drama..alienation...ambition...the music, the libertine sex....most people cannot believe there was such a time and a place...A riveting novel of love and lust..of soaring joy and bitter despair...of Camelot awash and broken to pieces dream by dream in the two inch deep Perdenales River...oh yes of bitter downward change...from JFK to LBJ....like it or lump it....this is the way it was. This book is a precious literary and historical resource...a stunning and disturbing hands on account of a nation bursting into flames...driven by the zeal of youth. For me, a serious student and writer of the years that followed, this book was a spiritual experience. John W. CassellA

What A Great Story!

If you missed the 60s -- if you missed the excitement, the passion, the radicalism, the love-will-conquer-all hippies, the injustices, the honesty, the thrills, the politics, the greed, the hopes and dreams -- this book brings it all alive. Not quite the same as having been there, but no book I've read goes nearly so close to the real experience. If you were there, in the 60s (feel fortunate), you can't help but love reliving this unfotgettable story, with its captivating characters and the sensual three-way love affair at its core. It fascinated me from start to finish. I could not put it down.