Going Up the Country: When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks, and Radicals Moved to Vermont

by Yvonne Daley

Overview

How the counterculture movement changed Vermont—and America

Going Up the Country is part oral history, part nostalgia-tinged narrative, and part clear-eyed analysis of the multifaceted phenomena collectively referred to as the counterculture movement in Vermont. This is the story of how young migrants, largely from the cities and suburbs of New York and Massachusetts, turned their backs on the establishment of the 1950s and moved to the backwoods of rural Vermont, spawning a revolution in lifestyle, politics, sexuality, and business practices that would have a profound impact on both the state and the nation. The movement brought hippies, back-to-the-landers, political radicals, sexual libertines, and utopians to a previously conservative state and led us to today's farm to table way of life, environmental consciousness, and progressive politics as championed by Bernie Sanders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819579713
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	294
Sales rank:	596,338
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Yvonne Daley is the author of five previous books and has published more than 5000 news, feature, and magazine stories in publications such as Time, Life, People, and The Boston Globe. She divides her time between San Francisco and Vermont; she is the director of the Green Mountain Writers Conference and a professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University. Daley was recently named a Vermont scholar by the Vermont Humanities Council.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Tom Slayton Introduction The Hippie Invasion Life on the Commune Higher Education Food . . . and Revolution Entrepreneurship—Hippie-Style Political Transformation Creativity Drugs Women's Work Reimagined The Children of the Counterculture Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix: Soundtrack Sources and Resources Index

What People are Saying About This

Elizabeth Rosner

“I cannot imagine a more authoritative and inspiring voice than Yvonne Daley’s to guide us on this dazzlingly relevant journey.”

Steve Early

“Anyone fleeing to Vermont to escape retrograde politics elsewhere will learn much from this book!”

Tony Marro

“Vermont experienced an invasion of self-proclaimed ‘freaks’ who transformed the state in ways that were both profound and long lasting. Daley captures this brilliantly in her riveting account of how so much of the cultural and political life of the state was changed by them.”

Randal Smathers

“A love letter to a time and a place.”

Jon Clinch

“Artists, dreamers, craftspeople—they all discovered Vermont during a great migratory culture clash that began in the 1950s and continues today. How these newcomers changed the Green Mountain State, and how it changed them, is the fascinating subject of Yvonne Daley’s deep and personal study.”

From the Publisher

"I cannot imagine a more authoritative and inspiring voice than Yvonne Daley's to guide us on this dazzlingly relevant journey."—Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory

Editorial Reviews

"[Daley's] fascinating interviews stir up no shortage of old memories, good and bad, plus passionate defenses of differences once thought to be important . . . Daley's insightful look at Vermont before and after its fabled "hippie invasion" is a useful guide to building bridges to new neighbors not on the left or anywhere near it."—Counterpunch

"Daley argues that Vermont's counterculture—its communes, its ice cream, its drugs, its politics—has had a vast impact on the culture of the country writ large."—The Boston Globe

"That the author tells her story so well may be due to the fact that she approached it as both a participant and a seasoned journalist."—Barton Chronicle

"Anyone fleeing to Vermont to escape retrograde politics elsewhere will learn much from this book!"—Steve Early, author of Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City

"I cannot imagine a more authoritative and inspiring voice than Yvonne Daley's to guide us on this dazzlingly relevant journey."—Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory

From the Publisher