Reviews of Sixties Europe
Sarah Pugash in The Sixties Nick Ostrum in Europe Now Peter Apor in The Hungarian Historical Review 
Reviews of West Germany and the Global Sixties:
Jeremy Varon in the American Historical Review.pdf Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet in Critical Studies on Terrorism.pdf Holger Nehring in European History Quarterly.pdf Andrew Tompkins in German History.pdf Christina von Hodenberg on hsozkult.pdf 
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Sixties Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
‘This ambitious study will find its place on every 1960s reading list. Impressive in breadth and detail, it foregrounds the creative, radical and globally connected reinventions of social power and progressive politics. The narrative interweaves the legacy of past rebellions, the centrality of Third World Liberation to European debates, and the continued relevance of class mobilisation. A major contribution to scholarship and a fascinating read.’ Maud Bracke, University of Glasgow 'The best short book on 1968 that I have read. Brown’s highly engaging account does justice to the variety of Europe’s many '1968s' while courageously proposing to grasp that era as a whole. Situating 1968 within deeper histories of radical agitation and inviting new appreciation for the relevance of 1968 in our own time, he pinpoints tensions that have long-haunted emancipatory politics: between culture and politics, anti-authoritarianism and organization, and the individual and the collective. Sixties Europe will substantively mark the field and serve as a tremendous resource for undergraduate and postgraduate classrooms.' Julian Bourg, Boston College ‘A commanding and absorbing study of extraordinary range for the scholar and general public alike. Casting his eye across time as well as space, Brown elucidates deep complexities alongside commonalities, as he moves across the widest range of popular politics, to explore dreams - and outcomes. A remarkable achievement.’ Belinda Davis, Rutgers University ‘Brown provides an important analysis of the conceptual underpinnings of the revolutionary movements of the 1960s in Europe. This is very much a book of ideas, which rightly argues that the many movements on the left which blossomed in countries across the continent placed a search for meaning at the heart of their efforts.’ Nick Thomas, University of Nottingham West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Anti-Authoritarian Revolt, 1962-1978 (Cambridge University Press, 2013/2015). "...Timothy Scott Brown has given scholars studying the period a great gift: a masterful synthesis of swirling currents of rebellion placed in a groundbreaking conceptual frame. Exhaustively researched and elegantly argued, the book functions both as a comprehensive account of a major swath of postwar history and a provocative rethinking of the terms in which scholars have represented it." Jeremy Varon, The New School "Brown’s excellent and in many ways path-breaking West Germany and the Global Sixties is the synthesis we have been waiting for. In a book that is analytically rigorous and theoretically versatile, yet soundly grounded in primary materials, including rarely used collections and ‘grey literature’, Brown pushes the boundaries of the existing interpretations forward significantly. " Holger Nehring, University of Stirling "Der große Wert dieser Studie liegt vor allem in der konsequent durchgeführten Betonung globaler Einflüsse auf die lokale wie nationale westdeutsche „68er“-Bewegung." Christina von Hodenberg, Queen Mary, University of London "an important and positive contribution to ongoing debates about [1968]. Andrew S. Tompkins, University of Sheffield "This is a brilliant book, including the whole range of events and developments, political as well as cultural, that altogether shaped what today is known as '1968'. Thoroughly researched, Tim Brown's book masterfully overlooks the coincidence of circumstances that changed West German society so fundamentally in the 'Global Sixties'." Detlef Siegfried, University of Copenhagen "As the West German '1968' finally becomes claimed for history, many fresh perspectives come into play. In Tim Brown's excitingly original account, the unruly, boundary-crossing complexities of anti-authoritarianism appear in [a] refreshingly new light. West Germany and the Global Sixties brings the rhetoric of transnational history compellingly down to the ground." Geoff Eley, University of Michigan "With impressive analytical depth and comprehensiveness, Brown's insightful book situates West Germany's 1968 in an enormously rich tapestry of transnational connections, utopian visions, and cultural and political transformations spanning almost two decades. Vividly capturing the hopes and tensions of the period, this landmark study of the sixties will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the significance of 1960s/70s grassroots politics for German history and the global Cold War." Martin Klimke, New York University, Abu Dhabi "All politics is local, as Timothy Brown proves, transcending stale debates to deliver new complexity and fresh perspective on the 'global '60s', as this played out within the borders of West Germany. An absorbing story, well told." Belinda Davis, Rutgers University "… a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the '60s. It fills a sizeable gap by providing, in English, a detailed account of the origins, motivations, mindsets and achievements of the West German 'active transnationals' who set out to change the world. Brown's central argument is persuasive: skilfully interlocking the local and the global within cold war, third world, and generational narratives, as well as radical political and countercultural affinities, he is able to delineate complex patterns of influence and metamorphoses along vectors of space, time, sound, vision, word, power, sex and death. What makes the book stand out is the sheer depth to which Brown analyses the political, social and cultural impact of the West German anti-authoritarian revolt upon all who came in contact with it. A tour de force in its inclusiveness, and a triumph of deeply reflective scholarship." Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision. Media, Counterculture, Revolt (Palgrave, 2014). From Tropicália to the New American Cinema, French prog rock to conceptual photography, this anthology proves that any compelling account of the polyvalent conjunctures of culture and politics in the 1960s must be interdisciplinary. Readable and engaging, this book pries the decade out of the clichés that too often imprison it to offer fresh perspectives on music, art, and film.' Erika Balsom, Lecturer in Film Studies and Liberal Arts, King's College London "Much has been said and written about the 'global 1968,' but the impact of the global language of the arts in this revolutionary time period is still under-researched. This book links wild hair and ecstatic screams, guitar smashing and spirituality to a new picture of the multifaceted interrelation of sound and vision in the counterculture of the Sixties." Joachim Scharloth, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Dresden |
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Timothy S. Brown and Lorena Anton eds., Between the Avantgarde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe, 1957 to the Present (Berghahn Books, 2011).
“The book engages important and intriguing questions about culture and politics and makes a contribution to contemporary history. The essays fit together well, with a nice trajectory that includes a chronological element. The topics engaged are generally “fresh” and new, but I was also impressed by the rich historiography.” Jonathan Petropoulos, Claremont McKenna College “This volume presents many new insights into a subject that has not yet been analysed systematically enough. It therefore represents an important contribution to the history of subcultures and will no doubt have a considerable influence on the scholarly debate on this topic.” Detlef Siegfried, University of Copenhagen |
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Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance (Berghahn, 2009; 2016).
“Brown’s [innovative study] makes a vital contribution to an understanding of the Weimar Republic as a set of competing political stages, where radicalism was not the direct result of social or economic circumstances, but part and parcel of a deliberate dramatization of political speech.” German History "This is a remarkable, provocative, and eloquent study of the mutual suspicion, mutual citation, and mutual competition between Communists and Nazis who defined radicalism in terms of authenticity as well as ideology and thereby found themselves to be political intimates as well as adversaries. Timothy Brown provides an entirely new perspective on the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of the Third Reich." Peter Fritzsche, author of Life and Death in the Third Reich "... exciting and informative." H-Soz-u-Kult "This splendid book offers a fresh look at the extraordinarily violent cultural-political radicalism of the post-World War I era, which has long been obscured by the Manichean dualism of anticommunism/antifascism and the Cold War. Brown shows convincingly that the multitude of militant-male mass-based radical movements of Weimar Germany cannot be understood simply as dichotomous pre-fascist and pre-communist antecedents to Hitler and Stalin.... [A] sophisticated cultural interpretation." Diethelm Prowe, Carleton College |