The 1960s was a decade of social and political upheaval. Some of this turmoil had positive results: the civil rights revolution, John F. Kennedy's bold vision of a New Frontier and the breathtaking advances in space helped bring about progress and prosperity. Much, however, was negative: student and antiwar protest movements, political assassinations and ghetto riots roiled the U.S. and resulted in diminished respect for authority and the law. The U.S.'s violent spasms were mirrored by leftist youth revolt in Europe and Red Guard rampages in China.

The decade began under the shadow of the Cold War, with U.S.-Soviet tensions aggravated by the U-2 incident, the Berlin wall, the Cuban missile crisis and the space race. It ended under the shadow of the Viet Nam War, which deeply divided Americans--and their allies--and undermined the country's self-confidence and sense of purpose.

TIME CAPSULE/THE 60S has been adapted and condensed from the contents of TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine. The words, except for connecting passages in brackets [], are those of the magazine itself. The date at the beginning of each excerpt is the issue date of the magazine.

Everybody remembers the 1960s. Those who lived through the decade, even if they were not civil rights marchers in Alabama, hippies in Haight-Ashbury or soldiers in Viet Nam, felt the impact of the events that shook the nation and the world; people remember where they were when John Kennedy was shot and how they stopped awestruck to watch on TV as men first walked on the moon. And even those who did not live through the events themselves, nevertheless know who the Beatles were, and what "tune in, turn on, drop out" meant, and why we celebrate a national holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

That is why making the selections for this TIME CAPSULE was so difficult: everyone remembers the 1960s in his or her own way. The reader should remember then that the acts of selecting the texts and writing the bridging passages necessarily reflect the assumptions and attitudes, conscious or unconscious, of this decade and of the capsule's editor.