Searching For New Frontiers offers film students and general readers a survey of popular movies of the 1960s. The author explores the most important modes of filmmaking in times that were at once hopeful, exhilarating, and daunting. The text combines discussion of American social and political history and Hollywood industry changes with analysis of some of the era’s most expressive movies.

The book covers significant genres and evolving thematic trends, highlighting a variety of movies that confronted the era’s major social issues. It notes the stylistic confluence and exchanges between three forms: the traditional studio movie based on the combination of stars and genres, low-budget exploitation movies, and the international art cinema. As the author reveals, this complex period of American filmmaking was neither random nor the product of unique talents working in a vacuum. The filmmakers met head-on with an evolving American social conscience to create a Hollywood cinema of an era defined by events such as the Vietnam War, the rise of the civil rights movement, and the moon landing.