Join Rob Goldberg for a discussion of his new book RADICAL PLAY, which recovers a little-known history of American children’s culture in the 1960s and 1970s by showing how dolls, guns, action figures, and other toys galvanized and symbolized new visions of social, racial, and gender justice.

From a nationwide movement to oppose the sale of war toys during the Vietnam War to the founding of the company Shindana Toys by Black Power movement activists and the efforts of feminist groups to promote and produce nonsexist and racially diverse toys, Goldberg returns readers to a defining moment in the history of childhood when politics, parenting, and purchasing converged. Goldberg traces not only how movement activists brought their progressive politics to the playroom by enlisting toys in the era’s culture wars but also how the children’s culture industry navigated the explosive politics and turmoil of the time in creative and socially conscious ways. Outlining how toys shaped and were shaped by radical visions, Goldberg locates the moment Americans first came to understand the world of toys—from Barbie to G.I. Joe—as much more than child’s play.

Rob Goldberg is an author, historian, and chair of the History Department at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. His work has been featured in The New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. RADICAL PLAY is his first book.

Victoria Rose Pass is an Associate Professor at Maryland Institute College of Art, specializing in in Visual Culture, particularly in areas of design and fashion. Her research considers the history of fashion culture in the 20th century and focuses specifically on issues of gender and race.