Includes bibliographical references (pages [275]-288) and index.

Prologue -- A death in the family -- A girl isn't the same -- Shooting the dog -- Many feelings about segregation -- Life in the fifties -- Girls who dare: Nancy, Anne, and Scout -- Friday for revolutions, Wednesday for life -- Across frontiers -- Catching up with the revolution -- The class of 1968 -- Instead of happy childhoods -- This is the end -- Free, white, and twenty-one.

"Drew Gilpin Faust writes about coming of age in a conservative Southern family in postwar America"-- Provided by publisher.

"A privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For Drew Gilpin, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial hierarchy proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become "well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was necessary for her survival. During the 1960s, through her love of learning and her active engagement in the civil rights, student, and antiwar movements, Drew forged a path of her own--one that would eventually lead her to become a historian of the very conflicts that were instrumental in shaping the world she grew up in. Culminating in the upheavals of 1968, Necessary Trouble captures a time of rapid change and fierce reaction in one young woman's life, tracing the transformations and aftershocks that we continue to grapple with today" -- publisher's description.