Disproportionately skewed towards US events. I mean allocating 5-6 pages to Nigerian Civil War&Biafra while devoting more than a hundred to American students' protests? Give me a brake and re-write the coverage of the Soviet invasion to Czechoslavakia. Your account is very shallow.

1968 was a very important year for me. It was the year that I graduated from high school and started college. There were also a number of important historical events that I have vivid memories of. I remember the two horrific assassinations of Martin Luther King in April and Robert Kennedy in June. After high school graduation, I left London and stayed on my grandparent's farm prior to starting college in New Orleans, and I remember watching the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as the police brutally beat protestors and bystanders alike, as the protestors chanted, "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching...." And of course, the event pervading everything else was the Vietnam war, and efforts to bring it to an end. This book begins by stating, "There has never been a year like 1968, and it is unlikely that there will ever be one again....There occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world."

But these US events are not all that are covered by the book. It includes details about events and movements around the world, presented in roughly chronological order. There was the Prague Spring, as several of the Warsaw Bloc countries tried to distance themselves from harsh Soviet oversight, often as the result of somewhat spontaneous student uprisings. There were student protests all over the US, including the takeover of Columbia, the student protests in Paris and all over Europe that paralyzed cities and brought about huge changes. In Africa, civil war raged in Biafra. In Vietnam, the year began with the Tet Offensive, and in the small hamlet named My Lai, a massacre took place. Che Guevarra became a martyr. O.J. Simpson played in the Rose Bowl. Miniskirts caused the British government to lose tax revenues. (Children's clothing was exempt from taxes, and miniskirts, ranging between 13-20 inches in length fell into the definition of children's clothes.) The Beatles were into transcendental meditation. Hijackings to Cuba became common events. The Chinese were in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. Cesar Chavez led the grape boycott. And every night Walter Cronkite told us the news, especially the news from Vietnam. And when Walter Cronkite told us that Vietnam was lost, LBJ despaired. And so much more.

The book ends, "The year 1968 was a terrible year and yet one for which many people feel nostalgia. Despite the thousands dead in Vietnam, the million starved in Biafra, the crushing of idealism in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the massacre in Mexico, the clubbings and brutalization of dissenters all over the world, the murder of two Americans who most offered the world hope. To many it was a year of great possibilities and is missed."

I really enjoyed this revisit of one of the many historical years of the 20th century.

4 stars ( )

Exceedingly researched, this book reads more like a text book that a paperback.

1968 brought the Tet Offensive and the shipping of more and more American boys to die in a jungle, far away for a senseless endeavor.

By 1968, people were tired of the blatant lies told by the United States government. Lindon Johnson's war was costly, not only in terms of the loss of life, but financially as well. By the time the front page of newspapers should an image of a small boy running while skin is coming off from the burning, even those who supported the war were realizing just how terrible it really was!

The phrase of 1968 was "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." It was the year of death of Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, both assassinated. MLK, turned the focus from non violent protest regarding the treatment of African Americans, to speaking at the pulpit protesting the war that disproportionately drafted and killed black young men.

There were riots at the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago. Black Power became a buz word as Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X lifted fists in the air to protest not only the war, but the treatment of the black population in the United States.

TV became popular as increasingly people bought a small black and white box that focused on the face and personality of Walter Cronkite as the honest person to trust.

Packed through with facts, it took a while to read this missive that showed just how dysfunctional America was as it increasingly spun out of control. ( )

How much we forget. 1968 was a monumental year in many ways. I got married that year. There was a police riot at the Democratic National convention. Two assassinations. Riots in cities. A spirit of rebellion against authority all around the world. The Vietnam War got worse with the Tet Offensive. The president decided not to run for reelection. The capture of the Pueblo by North Korea. Prague Spring followed by the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. And the election of Nixon. Many people were sure it was the end not just of the United States, but of civilization as well.

Media attention was essential for the non-violent movements to succeed. Something they learned quickly was that in order to get that attention, non-violence had to be met with violence. If the response was equally non-violent, the media would yawn and go elsewhere. Martin Luther King learned this from the police chief of Albany, GA, Laurie Pritchett, who thwarted the "Albany Movement" in 1961-62 by responding to King's demonstration in a completely non-violent manner. It completely undercut the movement there. They were forced to target cities with hot-headed police chiefs and mayors. Video of police beating up peaceful demonstrators was priceless. It's a lesson that police in many communities still have not learned.

1968 was the beginning of a new era in television. Videotape immediacy and satellite transmission meant that the war could now be seen almost live from the battleground. The Tet Offensive, a military defeat for the Viet Cong (they were never to mount a cohesive campaign again) was a media victory for them. Westmoreland's staff had been talking about a light at the end of the tunnel, but the public now realized it was an oncoming train. The police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago were broadcast live. That had never happened before. People could see Mayor Daley call Abraham Ribicoff a Jew motherfucker on the convention floor. Those in power didn't like that unedited version of reality. Hubert Humphrey announced that "when" he became president he would have the FCC "look into that." The great liberal as authoritarian. Then again, the violence against the Hippies probably helped Nixon win the election.

Abbie Hoffman understood the power of television. Many people thought he was just a clown, but he understood that clowns attracted attention and that brought TV. TV didn't just report the news any more, it shaped it, and Hoffman, older than most of the other radicals at the time understood its importance.

In the meantime, a perfect metaphor for the bifurcation of society happened in the White House when Lady Bird Johnson invited Eartha Kitt, born in the cotton fields of South Carolina, to a dinner attended mostly by rich white liberal women. Topic of the day was how to address the crime wave (translation: blacks out of control in the cities.) She took it upon herself to suggest that having predominantly black army you sent to fight a war they didn't believe in might be part of the problem. After an uncomfortable silence, Lady Bird graciously suggested she wasn't able to see the world the same way not having had the same experience as Kitt. There it was in a nutshell. *

2020 looks like a walk in the park in comparison.

Slogans are always useful in helping to garner support and defining an issue. The Democrats have failed rather miserably in picking slogans recently, "Defund the Police" being an excellent example. You should not have to explain a slogan. The civil rights movement picked cogent ones. "Freedom Riders" has such an appealing ring to it and needs no explanation. The non-violent movement had the moral high ground and the example of the protester who took his shoes off before leaping on top of a police car to give a speech because he didn't want to scratch the car was emblematic. Running a non-violent movement takes so much more work and planning than just being violent and reacting with rage.

Anyone over fifty will be riveted. Those under should read it to understand why we are where we are today. A must read.

Kitt's comment: "The children of America are not rebelling for no reason. They are not hippies for no reason at all. We don't have what we have on Sunset Blvd. for no reason. They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise sons – and I know what it's like, and you have children of your own, Mrs. Johnson – we raise children and send them to war." As a result the CIA put together a phony dossier on Kitt, that was later unearthed by Seymour Hersh in 1975, that branded her as a "sadistic nymphomaniac" and got her blacklisted. (https://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/03/archives/cia-in-68-gave-secret-service-a-report-containing-gossip-about.html) ( )

This is what it says on the tin, a look at 1968, month by month, crisis by crisis.

And it’s Mark Kurlansky, one of my favorite history writers, so it has a lot of positives.

But, it is written with a certain bias – from the left, which is fine if that’s the way you lean, too. I don’t, so I didn’t agree with some of his opinions or insights.

That didn’t make it a bad thing, it just made me wince every now and then when he said something I didn’t find true.

That’s all beside the point. The point is, 1968 was a pivotal year in world history, and this is a very good look at it – flaws and all.

Up soon for me, now that it’s 2019, I’m going to tackle a book about 1969!

For more of my book reviews, go to Ralphsbooks. ( )