If you're at all interested in this era of art, this is a fantastic read. It's full of details and helps make sense of the various movements taking place in the era.

This is an exhaustive recounting of the history of New York’s Village and underground and its cultural movements. There is so much information packed into each sentence of this book that enthusiasts of any of the underground cultural movements of the 1960s are sure to find some new information here.

The book takes a look at the people, places, and performances that made up movements such as the Beat poets, cinéma verité, vulgar modernism, free jazz, and guerrilla theater among so many others. Hoberman, as an icon himself in the history of the Village Voice, uses local and alternative news publishing sources, in addition to mainstream media, traditional publications, and various other direct sources, to relay the elements of many of these, otherwise lost, performance pieces and personal narratives. He is doing the work of making the ephemera tangible by pulling from contemporary sources for a complex history of cultural movements and performance during this time in New York.

As packed full of information as this book is, there are also a few infrequent asides from the author followed by a final small section connecting stories about the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky with the author and then elegantly connecting the author to the publication that started the whole book and helped to document these movements: the Village Voice. In many ways, this book is as much a love letter to the Voice and its cohorts as it is about the Village in the 1960s. In fact, Hoberman suggests that he “consider[s] a memoir, just not [his],” (p. 406).

I learned so much and was amazed to see just how connected these influential key characters were by people, places, and performances that are lesser known. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think that it is a good read and a useful resource for anyone interested in the cultural movements of this time period.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book and agreed to right an honest review based on my thoughts about the book. Thank you to NetGalley and Verso Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was a really well done nonfiction book, and enjoyed the history of this and how everything was told. I enjoyed getting to read this and learn about the period in New York history. J Hoberman has a great writing style and was glad I got to read this.