UP AGAINST THE WALL: A History of the Columbia Crisis

by Jerry L. Robert Friedman & the Staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator Avora ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1968

That spring the neat rectilinear paths in the center of the campus were ignored and a brown diagonal cut across the grass, the shortest distance between the two most frequented points; on April 21, at a sparsely attended SDS meeting, grad student Paul Rockwell noted: ""We have a tactical problem in that we are trying to save our ass."" The old order had lost its sanctity, three preexisting issues, now linked, engendered a popular front, a small nucleus was bent on confrontation; the next day it came. In a penetrating, highly professional report, preceded by an analysis of why Columbia? why then?, the editors and staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator set forth the actions and motivations on all sides. It is an enormously rich narrative, psychologically and politically astute, and indifferently skeptical rather than hermetically unbiased; at the conclusion, ""the same rhetoric, the same sort of black-and-white analysis"" is attributed to radicals and administration--still. Sure to engross and stimulate, likely to last.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION