Writings for a Democratic Society : The Tom Hayden Reader

From his earliest days as a Freedom Rider and leader of Students for a Democratic Society, through decades as a state senator, to contemporary notes on the Iraq war, the global South, immigration and spirituality, Tom Hayden’s writings constitute nothing less than an alternative history of our times.

Writings for a Democratic Society is the only book that encapsulates Tom Hayden’s writings over fifty years, a time in which he has been a reflective eyewitness to American history in the making. The book is composed on sections about the new Left of the 1960s, the Chicago 8, Vietnam, electoral politics, gang violence, Ireland, the environment, global justice and US foreign policy today.

"Tom Hayden changed America," the national correspondent of The Atlantic, Nicholas Lemann, has written. He created the "blueprint for the Great Society programs," according to presidential assistant Richard Goodwin. He was the "single greatest figure of the 1960s student movement," according to The New York Times Book Review. Forty years later he was described as "the conscience of the Senate."

"His journey is our journey through the tumultuous and disillusioning decades. He is our Everyman, he is us."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"One comes away enthralled by Hayden’s odyssey."—The Boston Sunday Globe

Tom Hayden is the author or editor of more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including Reunion and Street Wars.