bell, Kentucky and Fort Benning, Georgia.nAt Benning he meets LieutenantnTerhune, infantry officer, general’snaide and bachelor, a status which, innthe Old Army, is still a, mark againstnhim. He spends casual days with Terhune,ntalking about Army life, parachuting,nrunning, taking part in warngames. The camp routine of the Armynin 1979 is much as it was in 1969 orn1939: dull, repetitive, exhausting, butnconstant, lasting. It is here that Wolffncloses, having learned that life beyondnManhattan continues largely unchangednand unaffected by the tantrums of socialnreformers, avant-garde politicians andnwriters who produce boring, standardizednmanuscripts meant to change thenworld. That there is a people, a nationnof profound moral strength that survivednthe mass assault of the misfits ofnthe 60’s and the misanthropes of then70’s is the lesson Wolff learns for himself.nLouis Filler’s V guards and followersnis a backwaid glance of a differentnsort. He is a competent historian ofnAmerican culture, and he provides anperspective on many significant, andnsome less than significant, nonconformistsnof American history. Emerson andnWhitman wrote long poems aboutnyouth, and Poe was a young man whennhe left his imprint on literature. A hostnof other flamboyant figures—CharlottenOilman, Virginia WoodhuU and HutchinsnHapgood wrote of and discussednsuch topics as appealed to “youth” innthe 1960’s, and were lost in obscurity asnothers, equally obscure, took theirnplaces. Earlier American history, innshort, is filled with people who espousednsexual liberation, carefree drug use, pornography,npacifism and violent revolution.nFiller has an appropriately matterof-factnattitude towards them since, innperspective, the majority were idle esthetes,nacademic scribblers or drunkennjournalists whose ideas never got anywhere.nBy the 1950’s, however, thingsnbegan to change. Jack Kerouac was readnand idolized by millions of teen-agers.nChronicles of Cttlturenthe first children of the television generation,nbored at the prospect of life thatnoffered no challenge except doing betternthan their parents in material terms.nOlder generations, at least, had thenDepression and a world war to overcome.nYouth in the early years of thenMedia Age had jitterbugging. Therenmust be more to life than that. Eventsnsoon proved them right.nIt is crucial that Filler has distinguishednbetween “vanguards” and “followers”nbecause, as he tells us in hisntain civil-rights activists, Stokely Carmichaelnand Eldridge Cleaver amongnthem, which poured out in the hate andnviolence of the Black Panthers andnSNCC. Vietnam, meanwhile, became ancatalyst for whites, who addicted themselvesnto the drugs that were the gluenthat kept the counterculture together.nAs time passed, civil rights and warnpaled as causes, and rock festivalsn(Woodstock, Monterey) and riots (Chicago)ngave the hippies and the radicalsna common ground, and brought forthn”{Vanguards and Followers is] an appalling scatter ot vignctte.s and observationsnbasted together by the dubious premise that youth movements throughout Americannhistory are unified by virtue of being American. The writing is .shallow, incoherent,nsentimental and often misleading …”n— Naiiovnhistory of youth movements, those atnthe front of the line in the protestnmarches could not always be consideredn”young” even by the most generousnyardstick. In the Catholic Church, ofncourse, the guitar Masses and height-offashionnhabits were the creations ofnmiddle-aged priests and nuns, not thenyoung ones. The new left had TomnHayden and Joan Baez, but Dr. Spock,nthe Berrigans and Rev. William S. Coffinnwere no spring chickens. Filler’snbest portraits of youth, and his saddest,nare those of young people as victims.nIn Haight-Ashbury, at the peak of thenflower-child craze, he writes that:n”Tales were endless about the varietynof people who swept in and out of thenarea, the numerous drugs they used,nthe filth which attended their labors.nThe indiscriminate coupling, concentratednin Hashbury, as some callednit, among the educated as well as thenuneducated, gave a new strength tonVD and made it a notorious productnof Sixties social history.”nAs we watched, the 60’s youth movementncrashed in tragedy and despair,nprobably on some particular day inn1973. Filler traces its developmentnclosely and perceptively, from the firstnstirrings of anti-Americanism of cer-nnnnew leaders like Abbie Hoffman andnJerry Rubin, who were more interestednin promoting mass slavishness to drugsnthan civil dissent. The youth movementnveered sharply away from rationality;nwhile some deserted to work within thenpolitical process for Eugene McCarthynand Robert Kennedy, the true disciplesnof Rubin-Hoffman-Hayden gathered innChicago in August 1968. “Yippies”nallied with the SDS to tear apart thenDemocratic National Convention, and,nsimultaneously, the illusion of youthfuln”idealism” as the force behind the movement.nThe SDS was destroyed by internecinenwarfare as the Weathermen,nwith their helmets, clubs, flak jacketsnand Viet Cong flags took charge.nFiller’s research is impeccable and henreveals much that has not been notednabout even this oft-told tale, such as thenclose links and mutual admiration betweennJerry Rubin and Charles Manson.nManson, widely considered a psychoticnaberration, actually moved in the samenprofessional circles as Sharon Tate andnhis other victims as a pornographic filmnproducer and scriptwriter. Dope wasnthe common ground for Manson andnthose he killed; they, in fact, were indulgingnin various drugs when Manson’snfamily arrived that grim night. The circlenwas complete. On the far left, asn