The anxieties of the 1950s intensified as the Cold War heated up. JFK ’s election promised a New Frontier, and then his assassination extinguished that flame. On the one hand, the civil rights, Chicano (El Movimiento), women’s, student democracy, labor union, environmental, and public interest movements of the 1960s promoted a robust government response in which Congress passed hundreds of new laws to address the concerns raised by the movements. LBJ’s Great Society also included an array of social program that addressed the extraordinary level of poverty in the country. On the other hand, the Vietnam War significantly dampened the hopes for a Great Society as tensions arose between those for and against our continued presence in Vietnam, weakened trust in government. The political movements added to this lack of trust when they supported legal procedures to make sure that government did its job. As faith in government receded, and the reaction to the extraordinary expansion of government intensified, the table was set for a new allegiance to a market economy.

For Mailer, the 1960s were not only notable for the volume of his published writing, but for the extent of his political engagement and participation. Though Mailer wrote and spoke about American politics until the end of his life, he was arguably most directly involved in political protest during the Vietnam War era. During this time, he spoke out frequently against the war, and in 1967 published the stylistically innovative Why Are We In Vietnam?, often read as an allegorical criticism of the national mindset that led to America’s involvement in the unwinnable war. Most notably, Mailer participated in the March on the Pentagon in October of 1967, which provided the foundation for his Pulitzer Prize winning work Armies of the Night (1968), a seminal work of New Journalism that to this day is considered one of the best pieces covering the event.