Clara BinghamBesprekingen

This book is a collection of first-person accounts of the period August 1969-August 1970. A range of voices are included - from draft resisters and activists to FBI agents - and it's remarkable how much occurred during this time frame - leak of the Pentagon Papers, the Kent State Shooting, Woodstock. I learned a lot from this book and I appreciated hearing the different perspectives on this momentous time. If you're interested in the history of the 1960s and 70s, this book is highly recommended.

"Just like that affirmative action had come to the Iron Range, and it set the stage for Lois Jenson and a handful of women desperate for a decent wage to walk into a place that had been forced by the federal government to hire them".

Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law by Clara Bingham

Class Action is a very well written book. For those that don't know..this is the book that inspired the movie "North Country".

It is all about the Sexual Harassment case brought by Mine Workers that changed Sexual Harassment Laws. In the movie, Charlize Theron plays the lead. It is quite a story and not a happy one. Both the book and the film are excellent.

I enjoyed this book greatly. It goes into way more detail then the movie did and sort of fills in many of the blanks.

It's a very sad book too. There was so much that happened. But it is so odd reading it in that it is Non Fiction and: warning to any feminist: I am sure the book might make you angry. The reason it will make you angry is because of the deplorable and disgusting treatment of the women. But it's an important book to read and educational as well.

The book contains much Legal speak and I will admit there are parts that are a bit wordy and seemingly very long winded but it is pretty easy to read overall. It's an important book as well and educational although aspects of it are not easy to read.

Anyone interested in the subject matter would most likely really want to read this.

Eye-opening. It puts together the pieces in a way I hadn't heard before

Wonderful, wonderful. I can't praise it enough or the courage it took the women, Lois Jenson in particular, to fight corporate misogyny. The movie it was made into, North Country, toned down the abuse and greatly shortened the battle this woman fought - 10 years. Who of us would have the strength to endure what she did for us all?

This is my favorite book (so far) of 2016!

The author takes an in-depth look at the school year of August 1969 to August 1970 and addresses almost every milestone that happened in that time frame - and there were quite a few (draft resisting, the formation of the Weathermen, Nixon trying to take down any and all perceived threats to his power, the release of the Pentagon Papers, Kent State, Woodstock, breaking the My Lai massacre in the news, women's lib, the Black Panther Party, etc, etc). And she doesn't write it down like a textbook; instead, the major players who were willing to talk about what they saw, experienced, did, and thought tell the tales. The result is an incredibly engrossing read, and I am so sad that it is now over, although the author provides an extensive "further reading" category with well over a hundred books, and I want to read at least half of them.

The 60s were such a fascinating time frame for me and how society changed so dramatically, and even though a lot of people seem to think that it was a bunch of hippies who smoked dope and listened to trippy music, there is so much that happened during this time frame that still affects us to this day. And the book doesn't shy away from the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Reading this book was an eye-opener for me, showing just how disconnected I feel from the political process. It is amazing to me to see so many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who saw what they knew to be wrong and did what they could to change it. And now, today, we have such an amazing network available to us to organize (the internet), and we don't use it. It just blows my mind. And so many people think that Edward Snowden is an enemy. Also blows my mind. Listen to some of the songs from the era (Steppenwolf's "Monster" is a great place to start and is mentioned in this book) and they apply so, so much to modern day problems too.

Highly recommended.

Best: the sorting of 1969 - 1970 into useful categories such as The Draft, Moratorium, Townhouse, Culture Wars, Army Math.
Second Best: descriptions of Vietnam War escalation from Nixon insiders
Third Best: Commentary by the Armstrong Brothers, perpetrators of the Army Math bombing in Madison, WI
Worst: Mark Rudd, David Harris, Bill Ayres, and Bernadine Dohrn humblebragging about their Weather escapades.
Second Worst: not enough on women (nor enough of their voices, still silenced), Black Panthers, Young Lords, Jackson State killings
Third Worst: too much Timothy Leary - who gives a shit - and not enough Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

This is a good (if selective) recounting of (for some of us) our true glory days. Hardly to be believed by our children, hardly to be forgotten by us.½

Witness to the Revolution is a powerful, compelling, intense, immersive, easy to read, hard to put down, brilliant book. I absolutely loved the author's unique approach in writing this. Rather than using interviews as research, then stringing together a chronological, impersonal narration, the author lets her interviewees tell the story in their own words. Clara Bingham puts these pieces together in order of events, as well as dividing them by specific topics (Woodstock, Weathermen, My Lai, etc.). We're shown all sides of the tumultuous era; from conservatives, to hippies and the drug culture, to hard-core activists. The result is a stunning and comprehensive account of one of the most divisive periods in American history.

Time and distance allow us to reexamine past events, but even then we are often shown a skewed image, or perhaps a narrow and biased (unintentional or not) focus. Clara Bingham has given us the gift of an expansive view, so we all might see what the other side saw at the time, good, bad, or indifferent.

In reading this, it's difficult not to be struck by just how close the US came to a full out revolution. I also found myself pondering our current state of general complacency. Some people say that eliminating the draft was not a good thing, because it allows us the freedom to disconnect from politics that aren't directly effecting us. Perhaps that's true. This book certainly gives us much to consider.

I could go on and on about the attributes of this book. But, really, the most important thing I can tell you is to read it.

*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine, for my honest review.*

Wow. This book is well worth reading, not for any great artistry of prose, but for the story it tells. This case, dramatized (and actually toned down, I hear) for the big screen as North Country is unbelievable. Unbelievable the crap these women went through in order to get a living wage, unbelievable the tactics brought to bear against them by the company's lawyers, and unbelievable, to me at least, that this case and all its legal implications were not resolved until 1998.

I think by 1998 I'd already heard a contemporary say that feminism was 'over' because it had done its work back in the 1970s. Hell, maybe I thought it myself. The fight for equity wasn't and isn't over, and this clearly written account (co-authored by a lawyer and a reporter) will make you grateful for the laws that protect everyone at work today in America, and the sacrifices that were made to get them.½

This was an excellent read. Being a true story about the U.S.'s first sexual harrassment class action, I expected it to be a dry chore to read, but the opposite proved true. The writers wrote it in the style of "creative nonfiction" weaving the kind of compelling narrative usually not found within nonfiction legal cases. Even though I was already aware of the overall outcome of the lawsuit, having been introduced to the story via the movie North Country, and had researched the case itself afterward, still the writing was engaging enough that it was difficult to pry myself away from the book once I started reading.

The book is so much better than the movie. It gives you a much truer sense of what the women went through. Which is to be expected, of course, but I was surprised at the changes in the movie.