Summer of ’71: Five Months That Changed America

1971 marked the third year of the Nixon Administration, and the presidency was confronting issues, both foreign and domestic. The economic threat of inflation posed a threat to Nixon’s re-election chances. Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, were attempting to end the fraught war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, a classified and eye-opening account of the US involvement in Vietnam from the Truman to the Johnson Administration was in the hands of Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine and Rand Corporation employee. Ellsberg wanted to expose the lies of the government’s handling of the conflict, but was having little luck in publishing it, that is, until he ran into Neal Sheehan of the NY Times. Nixon’s “Law and Order” administration disdained radical activists, such as Professor Angela Davis, and pursued her with a vengeance when Davis was implicated in a botched kidnapping-murder.

Summer of ‘71 brilliantly encapsulates a frenzied period in US history, where society was in upheaval, a revolutionary spirit hung in the air, and a presidency was about to surrender to its paranoia. John A. Jenkins has written an absorbing history book with more than topical subject matter, a book filled with complex heroes and villains.