A specialist of African American and women's history, HélèneLe Dantec-Lowry is Professor of American Civilization at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, where she directs the Center for Research on North America.Ambre Ivol is Associate Professor of US Civilization at the University of Nantes. Her research interests include Afro-American history, political history, and the study of intellectual generations. She is currently editing a Howard Zinn Reader (Agone, 2014).

"This important work interrogates the history of the Left in vital ways, bringing an abundance of fresh insight into developments that have remained as mysterious to activists as to outsiders. The comparisons and contrasts of the US and French Left, one seemingly collapsed by 1960 and the other still dominated by an Old Left presence, offer new ways of seeing developments since. The crisis of Ferguson, Missouri, prompting protests across a nation but without any seeming coordination or means of continuity, alone suggests how badly this volume is needed."-- Paul Buhle, author of Marxism in the United States, coeditor of the Encyclopedia of theAmerican Left

• IntroductionAmbre Ivol & Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry Part I The End of History? From the Fall of Communism to the Resurgence of MilitancyChapter 1 Blind Spots of the American Left. 1960s to the Present Stanley Aronowitz with James CohenChapter 2 Memory and Amnesia in the Occupy Wall Street MovementJean-Baptiste Velut Chapter 3 The Decline of the Communist Idea in a French Union (the CGT), a Sociological Case Study, 1945-2000Guy GrouxPart II. Reassessing Generations: Designated and Forgotten Heirs in Black and White Chapter 4 Black Radical Thought Over Time: from Marxist Traditions to the Hip Hop GenerationManning MarableChapter 5 Intellectual Origins of the New Left: the Legacy of the "Lyrical Left"A. Ollivier-MeliosChapter 6 Radical Voices of the Silent 1950sSoraya GuenifiChapter 7 Rebel Apart: Saul Alinsky and the Troubled Memory of the New LeftAndrew DiamondPart III Militant Narrative Modes: the Radical Edge of Leftist MemoirsChapter 8 Remembrances of Political Things Past: Memoirs of Gay Militancy as Militant MemoirsGuillaume MarcheChapter 9 The Sixties Revisited: Tom Hayden's Retrospective EyeHélène ChristolChapter 10 From North to South in the Sixties: A Black Militant's RecollectionsJohn Brown ChildsChapter 11 Activist Writings: Public Memory and Militant History in Alternative libertaire, a French Anarchist OrganizationIrène Pereira