Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a wave of movements challenging the status quo, from civil rights and Black Power to the New Left and gay liberation. Feminism, anticolonial struggles, industrial strikes, and antiwar protests had global impacts. In response, previously marginalized authors, feminist, gay, lesbian, Black, and others, broke into genres like crime, thrillers, and erotica, once dominated by conservative white males. Meanwhile, pulp writers offered bizarre interpretations of the revolutionary era, reflecting the Nixonian backlash and the rise of conservatism under Thatcherism and Reaganism.