January 6th Investigation Committee Chair Praises New Book: The Times They Were a-Changin’

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D, MS), Chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES, June 2, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D, MS), Chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, is praising a new book that will be published two days before the start of the committee’s nationally televised public hearings next Thursday.

“The Times They Were a-Changin’ [Arcade, June 7] is a riveting book on the progressive advances that were achieved in ‘the Long 1964,’” Thompson said. It can “help to thwart rightwing radicals’ plans to annihilate the progress we have made toward equality.”

The book, the eleventh by award-winning Millsaps College historian Robert S. McElvaine, author of such notable books as The Great Depression and Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, shows how the battle lines of today—the current panoply of social, cultural, sexual, and economic issues that so divide Americans and threaten the survival of the American experiment—are all about whether the nation should build upon or tear down the progress toward fulfilling the ideals of 1776 that was made in what he terms the Long 1964—from John F. Kennedy’s assassination in late 1963 through mid-1965. It was then that what is generally thought of as “the Sixties” arrived, when America’s identity began to be re-imagined, a much more inclusive definition of “American” was established, and the United States for the first time became a full democracy.

The book blends myriad events and personalities of the extended year—Lyndon Johnson, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the rest of the British Invasion, Muhammad Ali, Dr. Strangelove, Bob Dylan, the Civil Rights Act, Lesley Gore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Betty Friedan, Malcolm X, Freedom Summer, Bob Moses, Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Martin Luther King Jr., Lenny Bruce, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Free Speech Movement, Motown, Joan Baez, Ronald Reagan, the roots of women’s liberation, Selma, John Lewis, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Watts, and more—into a coherent whole.

“McElvaine summons the past to illuminate today’s existential threats to democracy,” said Nancy McLean, author of Democracy in Chains, “and the resources that might help us surmount them. In the hands of this gifted storyteller, 1964 becomes a prism through which to see the present with fresh eyes, just in time to save the future.”



Author will be in New York June 6-10 and available for in-person media interviews, and then or later for virtual interviews. He is able to comment on how the historic events of 1964 connect with and inform much of what is happening presently in the United States. His perspective can, for example, add a different dimension to discussions of the January 6th Committee hearings. For media inquiries, please contact: Lauren Lee (240) 533-1669 / lauren@nda.ltd