Grace Elizabeth Hale Livres

"In Cool Town, Grace Elizabeth Hale examines the town's flourishing as a Southern alternative culture mecca, emerging out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s to become home for a set of artistic, social, and political alternatives to northern liberalism or urban punk on the left and Sunbelt Republicanism on the right. In this moment of cultural flourishing, Hale argues, a generation of young white southerners could not or did not see themselves fleeing the region, but also did not fit the cultural or political options available at home. So they blended a DIY ethos, local traditions, and musical and other influences from outside to create their own thing-the "Athens scene"--

In Athens, Georgia in the '80s, if you were young and willing to live without much money, anything seemed possible. Cool Town reveals the passion, vitality, and enduring significance of a bohemian scene that became a model for others to follow.