The Essential Mario Savio

"This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the 1960s and how they changed American society.  Insightfully contextualized by Robert Cohen, Mario Savio's letters and speeches chronicle the history of two key moments of that pivotal decade—the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement—and reveal Savio as an activist and thinker who helped inject new meanings into the idea of American freedom."—Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, author of The Story of American Freedom

"Robert Cohen has performed invaluable service by collecting, annotating, and contextualizing the letters and speeches of Mario Savio, leader of the now iconic Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964. The collection captures Savio’s extraordinary eloquence and tactical brilliance, as well as his mission to convert the Berkeley campus into a space that would allow free speech about politics as well as ideas. The book is a tribute to Berkeley’s role not just in launching the turbulent student protests of the 1960s, but in expanding the fundamental ideal of free speech, while also revealing some of the personal and institutional costs of the struggle."—Nicholas B. Dirks, Chancellor of the University of California

“This is an extremely important collection of primary materials from the youthful pondering of Mario Savio, a vitally important but little understood figure of the 1960s. The connections between activism in the South and activism on the Berkeley campus have never been more vividly expressed than in Savio’s own words.”—Paul Buhle, Brown University

"This powerful work deserves a wide reading. Mario Savio spoke with passion, clarity, and courage when he confronted injustice in Mississippi and again when he defied the suppression of free speech at the University of California. This well-edited introduction to the “essential” Savio is a boon to both scholarship and citizenship."—Lewis Perry, author of Civil Disobedience: An American Tradition

“Lucid and persuasive, Robert Cohen is a leading authority on the history of student activism in the United States, most particularly in the 1960s, and even more particularly, the events at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964.”—Maurice Isserman, Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of History at Hamilton College