Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks

Penny Lewis is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, City University of New York.

• Introduction1. Collective Memory of Vietnam Antiwar Sentiment and ProtestPart I. The Antiwar Movement: A Liberal Elite?2. Middle Class Cultures and the Movement's Early Years3. Countercurrents in the Movement: Complicating the Class Base4. Countermemory I: "A Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight"5. Countermemory II: GIs and Veterans Join the MovementPart II. Hardhat Hawks?: Working-Class Conservatism6. Anticipation of the Class Divide7. Hardhats versus Elite Doves: Consolidation of the ImageConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

As Penny Lewis argues and persuasively demonstrates in this theoretically and methodologically innovative book, 'working-class opposition to the war was significantly more widespread than is remembered, and parts of the movement found roots in working-class communities and politics.' She therefore sets out to revise the distorted history of the anti-war movement and then to explain theoretically why this belief has persisted for such a long time.- David Ryan (International Affairs) On rare occasions, something enters one's mental universe so radiant that it lights up the whole mind, burning away what now seem like intellectual preoccupations of vastly less import. Such was my experience consumed by Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks, a book worthy of regard as an instant classic on literature on the American experience of the Vietnam War and for an audience far beyond academia.(The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture) This book offers a powerfully argued response to a thesis about working-class conservatism and the Vietnam War that posits that members of the working class were so alienated by hippie protestors' appearance, tactics, and lack of patriotism that they rallied around the U.S. flag and supported the war more than their middle-class fellow citizens did. Penny Lewis demonstrates that 'working-class opposition to the war was significantly more widespread than is remembered' and that 'the greatest support for the war came from the privileged elite, despite the visible dissent' of some of its members.... Methodologically responsible and exhaustively researched, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks is an indispensable contribution to scholarship about the domestic debates surrounding the Vietnam War.(Journal of American History)