What They Didn't Teach You About the 60s

Another excellent addition to this series in which Mike Wright goes behind the scenes on those 'truths' we take for granted. To many, the 60s are an enigmatic era epitomising such nobles ideals as truth and freedom whilst at the same time conjuring images of men on the moon, student protests around the world, the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and of course the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam. Wright has delved deeper into these people and events to reveal the 'rest of the story' and highlight lesser known events. For example: In 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald, down and out in Moscow, borrowed 453.71 dollars from the U.S. State Department to pay for an airfare home for him and his family. At twenty two, the average age of the U.S. soldier in Vietnam was four years younger than his World War II counterpart and that the American commitment to the war in terms of military personnel grew 100,000 percent during the decade. In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, police chief Bull Connor turned water cannons on a group of black children marching in protest against racial segregation - he apparently wasn't satisfied with result as he later set police attack dogs on them.