Campus News

Book tells tale of Athens’ last half-century

Athens: Images of Modern America
By Patrick Garbin
Arcadia Publishing
Paperback: $22.99

From the early 1960s to the present, perhaps no college town in America has changed as much as Athens. The book Athens: Images of Modern America tells that story through words and photos.

Over the course of 50 years, the city experienced desegregation at all levels of education, encountered all types of activism and demonstrations, and established an unparalleled music scene that still flourishes. Beginning in the 1980s, UGA athletic teams began winning national championships and continue to do so. Athens is no longer the sleepy, small college town it once was, but truly “the Classic City” in every sense of the name.

The book is authored by Patrick Garbin, a freelance journalist and UGA football historian who was born in Athens and graduated from the university in 1998.