1968: The Year That Rocked the World

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Summary: GREAT. a year to remember
Review: a must read for any student of history. brings back memories of that amazing year that changed the world a chance to revisit the events that shape our world.

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Summary: Walking the tightrope of history...
Review: Every college professor will tell you that history is more than a study of dates and events. Only by looking at the long term and greater societal trends can true understanding be gained. Mark Kurlansky proves this belief dramatically wrong in his newest, and best work to date, 1968. The research alone must have taken years, to say nothing of the narrative flow and care in crafting the book. What happened to make this one year so important? How about Vietnam in full swing complete with the Tet Offensive, the Nigerian oil war, Czechoslovakia moving toward democracy only to be invaded by the Soviets, Muhammad Ali being convicted of draft evasion, student demonstrations of every kind from Mexico to France, Martin Luther King being assassinated, Cuba perceived as the most exciting nation in the world, Robert Kennedy looking like the next president only to be killed, the cartoon-like atmosphere of the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago including seventeen minutes of televised police brutality, the Black Power salutes of Olympic medal winners, and the orbiting of the moon by Apollo 8? And most amazingly, Kurlansky ties it all together; interconnecting the many separate and diverse movements and moments and showing how they affected one another. He also retains the human touch with numerous quotations and interviews with the people who were there. This is history, pure and untainted, as close as you are likely to get without experiencing it. It is often said that those who lived through historical events are unaware of their importance until afterward, but 1968 shows how so many participants were very aware that "the whole world is watching" and they acted accordingly. This book is a must read for those who were there, and even more so for those who weren't. One more good book, and you can shelve Kurlansky right next to Bradley or Ambrose.

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Summary: If you were there you understand, if not, .....!
Review: For those of us who were there to witness these great shifts in the world and America, who saw the tragedy of murdered heroes, a war no one understood and the divisive political atmosphere that permeated almost every day, 1968 serves as a reminder that everything old is new again. As a college student at the time the world seemed like it was exploding every evening on the news, and the future looked grim. We were the children of "The greatest generation" and the world our parents helped save for us didn't seem to be living up to its promise, Camelot was a pipedream.

Reflecting on many of those events it is easy to see how they compare with today, especially the similarities of the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. Both were politically motivated by corporate power mongers, and seem to serve no purpose other than to enrich a few. The gross inequities of the draft - the day after I graduated from a state university my draft notice was delivered, and dozens of my friends suffered the same fate, yet not a single graduate of Harvard, Yale or Princeton was ever drafted into the Vietnam war - unlike John Kerry who enlisted, they used money, political favors and connections only open to the "favorite sons" - like Bush, Cheney and Rove - were unjust, unfair and discriminatory to the extreme. The hard lessons of that time are lost on those very same "favorite sons" who still extoll the extremism of a right wing sense of entitlement.

Kurlansky admits he is subjective, but it was difficult to live through those horrific events and not become jaded, and subjective. Du Pont in 1968 and Hilliburton in 2004 is the biggest example of the failure of our leader to understand the lessons of history, and Kurlansky is right to put it out there for others, too young to have witnessesed it to gain at least some understanding of their parents' experiences and current world views.

This is not great writing or even great history, it is best viewed as a window into a year when almost everything changed, and not always for the better. This should be required reading for every member of the Bush administration and anyone who thinks that history does not repeat itself - but of course we know Dubya doesn't read, so maybe Laura can read it to him - and soon.

Rating:
Summary: A book of history: human, comprehensive, courageous
Review: Mark Kurlansky has written the most important book ever published about one of this nation's most galvanizing, divisive, and imposing years in modern history. Baby boomers who lived through this history as college students will discover context and multi-faceted details about how this year changed them indelibly. Younger readers will gain a richer understanding about how the events of 1968 benefit them today, including feminism, racial integration, and a healthy distrust of powerful elites. (Imagine what it was like to be expelled from college because you openly cohabitated with your romantic partner.) The book breaks through U.S. ethnocentricity about this remarkable year by presenting graphic images of 1968 from Paris to Prague and Mexico City to the former Soviet Union. The author demonstrates without apology or hesitation that 1968 was a worldwide cultural revolution that today benefits all Western societies and has brought greater freedom and social equality to countless people. Kurlansky is to be praised, not criticized, for his extraordinary accomplishment, the painstaking research, and an enjoyable writing style that injects humanity into historical details.

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Summary: Yeah, right...like O.J. could have gotten into Cal
Review: Part hagiography, part self congratulation, Kurlansky tells us the tale of a generation that changed the world so much that the world is now fundamentally the same as it was before, only more so (that is, the world is increasingly state capitalist). The GI generation bored the young of their era with war stories. The generation of '68 demonstrates that anti-war stories can be even more boring. Kurlansky tendentiously offers us more of the same, only more tediously.

At 464 pages, the book is too long - but not nearly as long as the longwindedness of the generation of 1968.

I recommend the book - as a wonderful example of self parody.

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Summary: When 1968 becomes 2004
Review: Something changed in 1968. It is called "almost everything." The author takes readers through every wrenching month of that unprecedented year, drawing on painstaking research and the art of a very fine and deliberate writer. More than any other achievement, of which there are many in this book, Kurlansky gives his readers a chance to better understand today ... right now. So much of our current national debates about Iraq, the Patriot Act, and our teetering moral authority in world affairs, springboards in some way from that year. We were given many lessons then, some forgotten, many resurfacing as we again find our nation confronting major obstacles in world affairs. 1968 surely requires the critical reader to consider what we learned then and what it means now. This is a book about history ... repeating itself. Read it for greater context; read it for insights; but most of all, read it to examine the most crucial issues confronting a nation ... today.

Rating:
Summary: An absorbing overview of an important year
Review: The twelve months of 1968 represented a major turning point in the social and political development of many countries worldwide. Kurlansky has written an absorbing book on a pivotal year. While he covers what happened in a lot of places and provides considerable information about the trend of unrest experienced in diverse societies, it's a launching pad for further study. Another excellent book on the situation in 1968, with a focus on the events before and after the decisive March 1968 student protests in Poland, is "Forced Out: The Fate of Polish Jewry in Communist Poland."

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Summary: If You Haven't Lived Through Read About It.
Review: There are years that are indelibly embedded in a nations psyche because of specific events. In the US, 1963 comes to mind. There are times that are embedded in world consciousness in a more or less similar way-though these tend to be more pronounced, longer periods of unique historical impact-World War II and the Great Depression come to mind.

1968 stands as a unique year that is indelibly embedded in world consciousness. 1968 stands as the culmination of the birth of the globally connected economy. Seeds of youthful unrest and rebellion sprouted up, seemingly spontaneously, on a world wide scale in a more or less coincident fashion. The two above enumerated facts are singularly interrelated, and that's the key to reading Mark Kurlansky's 1968 : The Year That Rocked the World.

The seeds that led to the tumult of 1968 arose out of the ongoing globalization of economic infrastructure-particularly in terms of instant, globally available communications-as well as an historically unique alignment of youthful rejection of established political hierarchy and authority in a wide variety of places for a lot of coincident but largely unrelated reasons.

Kurlansky both succeeds and fails in his efforts to establish, organize and explain these phenomena. The author has a fairly unique and eclectic resume as salt, cod and such have been previous topics of study for him. There is obviously a big difference in trying to chronicle the aspects of a year as opposed to an object or substance. Kurlansky is not altogether successful in making the leap.

The dynamic that most clearly pointed to the tumult to come in the late 1960's first became apparent with the rise of the Beatles as an international cultural phenomenon
In 1963. The Beatles represented an almost cosmic change in cultural DNA across almost all borders. Youth worldwide had found a technological and social mechanism of interconnectedness and communication that has continued ever since (witness the Internet).

Suddenly, there was a worldwide outlet fore communicating the ingrained aspects of youthful rebellion. This rebellion was being stoked by the byproducts of the longstanding, ossifying effects of the cold war as well as the burgeoning upheaval towards personal empowerment that such movements as the Civil Rights movement embodied.

These rebellious influences had widely disparate origins, aims and expression, from the "flower-power", anti-war movement in America to the Cultural Revolution in china.

Kurlansky does an admirable job of covering a lot of this ground (though not all of it-the Cultural Revolution is largely ignored, for example). His stream-of-consciousness style of writing in this instance does much to evoke the emotional tenor of the times though it does little to help organize the historical aspects of this material in any sort of disciplined way. He also does a fairly admirable amount of analysis, in a sort of dissembling way, as to cause and effect issues.

However, the man has a particular view and bias towards he "flower-power" aspects of the situation. Moreover, he seems to be perpetually in search of understanding himself, not the sort of situation that lends itself to meaningful historical conclusions.

In the end we are left with a unique, informative genial mess of a book that stands up well as a sort of thoughtful, introspective, historically oriented memoir but a book that must be considered a failure as any sort of serious historical exercise.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book about a Turbulent Year
Review: Though I wouldn't be born for years after the tragic night they killed Bobby Kennedy, I remember it well. My father was there. Nineteen Sixty-Eight was a watershed year for him as it was for Amercia and the world. Not only did Bobby lose his life that year, but Martin did too. It was also the year of the siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, that war America wanted to forget even while it was still going on. It was a year of riots in both the aftermath of Mr. King's assassination and in Chicago at the Democratic Convention. Mr. Dubcek rose and fell in Czechoslovakia, Mr. Nixon became president, we saw TV from space and U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists in protest during the medals ceremony at the Olympic games in Mexico City.

All of this and more I'd been raised with, had learned at my father's knee when I was a child, reminded of again at his side when I was a girl and later when I was a young woman. These events shaped him, made him into a wonderful liberal, always willing to give the shirt off his back to help a stranger in need. But my dad's gone now and I haven't thought about 1968 in years, not until I saw this wonderful book in my local bookstore.

Mr. Kurlansky has delivered a book that brought back my dad, a book for all of us who were born so long after the fact and a book, I believe, that is must reading even for all of those who lived during that turbulent year that rocked the world. It's a year worth remembering, worth learning about, worth knowing.