J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows well, having lived through all of it as a teenager and young adult. The judge is now 72.

Obviously, it’s hard to write about the 1960s without discussing the civil rights revolution or the Vietnam war, and Wilkinson briefly treats them both. He credits the “rebels” of the ’60s with getting two things right: “They saw the civil rights revolution as long overdue and the Vietnam War as a tragic mistake.” But Wilkinson sees those big headline stories in a larger context of change. Often drawing on his own experiences, he emerges as a sharp critic of the sixties and its enduring influence.