Summary Of To Everything There Is A Season

Book Review “To Everything there is a Season”

In this book, Allan M. Winkler writes about Pete Seeger’s fascinating life and how his music helped improve the conditions of the less fortunate people during many protest movements throughout the twentieth century.

Winker begins by telling about Pete's early days as an activist, singing union songs and hanging out with Woody Guthrie and the Almanac Singers. Times changed, but Pete didn't. He remained true to his commitment to the people and his belief in the power of song to change the world. Pete used this power to strive for civil rights. Until today, his anti-war message and in his later years to spread his environmental message. It tells of his work on the Hudson Schooner and helping to

clean up the Hudson. He was very much of the environment and helping to preserve it.
Seeger sang with Woody Guthrie in the thirties and was member of hit folk group the Weavers in the forties and fifties. He was blacklisted in the fifties resulting in concerts being cancelled, radio stations stopped playing his songs, and he was banned from television until the Smothers Brothers had him on their show in 1967. Seeger was active in antiwar movement, his return to Smothers Brothers included him singing an anti-war song he wrote; "We Shall Overcome," which became the version of the civil rights anthem.
This book covers all these events, all of his life to today, yet at the end I felt that I did not really know Seeger. In my opinion it was like a series of events where Seeger played part in one way or another. I would have liked more about the effect the blacklist had on his family and on his relationship with the other Weavers. What he thought of his former friends who, unlike him, cooperated with the HUAC. There had to have been more to his relationship with Dylan, especially his reaction to Dylan going electric and what it meant to Seeger. What reaction did he have to the Smothers Brothers, especially in their efforts to bring him back to television? It would have been a more interesting book to read if I had learned more about Seeger himself; his personal thoughts towards different issues and how each of his song impacted himself and family.