Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties

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Summary: Three college women survive a tumultuous age
Review: I first read this book its first year on the shelves and have reread it many times. More to the point, the characters and their ways of speaking have never left me. This book is an important social history of the 1960s. It details many events I was just too young to appreciate at the time, having been born in 1959. This book filled in many gaps for me. It gives a riveting look at the confluence of important events this country coped with in the late sixties and early seventies, while these women were trying to establish themselves. I highly recommend this book, especially to any woman who has yet to read it.

I later read "Goat Brothers," a book about men written in response to "Loose Change," and highly recommend that book as well. I found it fascinating.

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Summary: The chronicles of three Cal sorority sisters from the 1960s
Review: I loved this book! I've been dying to read this book ever since I read Larry Colton's "Goat Brothers" in 1994 and I was so happy when I found it on Amazon in 1997! As a recent grad from Cal (where I was also in a sorority), I definitely related to some of these women's college experiences, such as the strong friendships formed with some of my sorority sisters, and a few of the Cal traditions described in the book. Sara Davidson's descriptions of the lives she chronicled in the story were articulate and straightforward-it was one of those books where I could not put down until I was finished with it. The different paths the women took after college were bittersweet and at times heart-wrenching. I definitely recommend to anyone with an interest in women's experiences during the '60s.

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Summary: In 1978 it inspired me, in 1999 it was bittersweet.
Review: I saw the miniseries on TV in 1978 in a college dorm with my girlfriends. It so inspired us, that as we tearfully said our good-byes at graduation, "Loose Change" became our anthem to describe what we expected as our futures unfolded. In 1999, I saw an article about Sara Davidson in People magazine, and I remembered how much the story had meant to me twenty years before--so it was time to get the book. The book jogged memories of the issues and choices I faced in the '70s, and also reminded me how much those '60s trailblazers did for their younger boomer-counterparts. I think it's time for the author to do a follow-up on these women today. In the meantime, I'm sending this book to my old college girlfriends.

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Summary: All the elements are here...
Review: It takes a lot to make a book excellent where all elements are concerned, but Sara Davidson has managed to accomplish that with Loose Change. The characters are very vivid, and easy to picture. What really made me enjoy this was that it was based on the actual lives of the three main characters. I thought that the sixties was covered here in great detail, with images that seemed to jump out at the reader from the pages. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and would love to read others that were similar to it. Highly reccommended!

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Summary: Enjoyed it Even More the Second Time
Review: Sara Davidson's "Loose Change" is a brilliantly-written account of the Sixties as experienced by three young women coming of age. I bought this book when it first came out in 1977 and loved it. Recently, I came across "Loose Change" in a used book store and just couldn't put it down.
The Sixties were a time of great social upheaval, and I remember many of the major events. I went though college in the late 60s and early 70s. Even though my background is somewhat different -- Blue collar, conservative, Catholic, male, short-haired, Pittsburgh, and definitely never inhaled -- it was interesting to see the female, radical point of view. Like many others in that period, Sara, Susie, and Tasha search for life's meaning in a turbulent time in which the old values they grew up with have withered away.
You are there in the historical events and movements of that period -- the Antiwar movement, major student protests at Berkeley and Columbia, the bloodbath at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, the music of Woodstock, rural communes, free sex, and the terror of the Altamont Concert.
This book seems to get better over time because there is a greater contrast between today's world and the 1960s. The Antiwar, Womens' Liberation, and Civil Rights Movements changed the country and the world for the better, and drugs have changed things for the worst. And the sexual revolution.... well, you be the judge.
I like Ms. Davidson's rich writing style, as she places the reader right there, feeling and experiencing life with Sara, Susie, and Tasha, "warts and all." She's gutsy enough to talk about sexuality, a formerly taboo subject. Sara, Susie, and Tasha follow their sexual drives and suffer many bad love affairs, for which both the men and women share the blame.
I've also enjoyed a few of Sara Davidson's other articles and her biography of Rock Hudson. "Loose Change" is now historical, and it's so alive you can hear the music and the protest marches. This book is definitely worth five stars and I would recommend it to almost everyone, even my own daughter.