Much of the discontent in the 1960s emerged from a sense of possibility – that blacks and whites could live in harmony, that the Vietnam War could end, that there could be a better future for all. Those hopes, for the most part, were dashed by the 1970s.
-- Narrator (Chapter 1, “Nervous Breakdown Nation” paragraph 2)

Importance: The quote gives a nutshell background look at the social setting of the time. Readers have to understand the general attitudes of people in order to fully understand the SLA, their motivations, and the public response to the kidnapping. The writer goes on in this section of history to write that bombings were a common means by which counterculture organizations expressed themselves.

Vacaville was the original link that connected the eight kidnappers. They were all part of what was known, loosely, as the prison movement, and it was through this work that the SLA emerged most clearly as a case of metastasized good...
-- Narrrator (Chapter 3, “The SLA” paragraph 6)