EXPLORING SPACE CITY!

In this nonfiction collection, journalists Dreyer, Embree, Duncan, and Bishop assemble notable work from a Texas-based countercultural periodical.

The 1960s was a golden age of independent journalism in America, providing fresh, alternative perspectives on such topics as the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the counterculture. AsJohn Moretta, the author of The Hippies: A 1960s History(2011), states in his introduction to this book, “No one can write a thorough history of the 1960s without an in-depth discussion of the importance of the emergence and proliferation of…the underground press.” From 1969 to 1972, the newspaper Space City! filled that niche in Houston, speaking for the bohemian scene in what was then one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. This book, edited by former staffers, collects some of the paper’s finest pieces of journalism, opinion, humor, and cartoon work, covering a slew of topics, including electoral politics, the Mexican American Youth Organization, local concerts by the Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground, and hard-hitting investigations into such local institutions as the Houston Chronicleand Rice University. Sometimes the paper became a subject in its own reporting, as when a conflict with members of the Ku Klux Klan led to the bombing of the Space City!offices. The book serves as a time capsule for a distinct American moment, not only in its accounts of historical events and cultural shifts—some famous and some forgotten—but also in its highlighting of the language and mindset of the paper’s young, often radical staff. “In 1969, there was such a thing as a ‘movement’; there was a burgeoning counterculture that seemed at times almost on the verge of ‘taking over,’ ” writes reporter Victoria Smith in the paper’s final issue, adding that “for people like us it was simply Life.” It’s this blend of timeless and of-the-moment material that makes the book such a compelling document, because even in less notable pieces, readers can feel the writers trying to find the voice of their era.

An engaging sampling of articles from a hip, confrontational newspaper.