Although only a junior in high school, 1968 was the most important year of my life to date, the year when I was most conscious of and involved in what was going on in the broader world. When I find a book on the subject, or the period surrounding it, or of a major event occurring during it, I tend to pick it up. Of all such books read thus far, Kurlansky's is the best.

The reasons for this opinion are several. For one thing, he doesn't confine himself to the USA. Extensive coverage is provided for events elsewhere, most particularly Czechoslovakia. Consequently, I actually learned some things I hadn't known. Also, he actually interviewed major participants in the events described--and not just Americans. I also appreciated the fact that he is openly partisan. I didn't share his enthusiasm for RFK or his mystification by McCarthy, but I certainly understand where he's coming from and appreciatively recognize his insider's point of view for some of the events discussed. Even when I feel his disagreement with some of my opinions, I feel that they've been respected. Often I was moved nearly to tears by his retellings.

There are some minor errors of fact in the book. The ones I noticed were primarily those concerning events I participated in--most particularly the demonstrations connected to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. However, the overall picture of the period as we lived it is, as we used to say, "right on".

The year that hope died and was reborn

I was born in 1974, so all of this was history by the time I got around to learning about it. I have always considered the events of 1968 to have been a significant, if not THE defining, year in US history since the end of the Civil War. Kurlansky rightly calls it a tipping point. If you lived through 1968, I think you might enjoy this book, though it might dredge up painful memories. If you were born when I was (or after) I think it’s imperative that you read this and focus both on how the world was different and how it is comparatively the same now. Certainly worth a read if only for the global perspective of this seminal year in history.

I was only 8 in 1968 so even though all this was swirling all around I only knew bits and pieces and names of people not the import or context which Kurlansky provides. Really fills in major gaps for me personally -Che, Fidel, the Prague Spring the Paris May riots, the 1968 election conventions, the Columbia building takeovers, Vietnam. I remember it all being on the news but I certainly never understood the whys or such granular detail of the players and outcomes. (Except for Vietnam- that I have learned a lot about but not how it was whipping up youth worldwide). What’s past is prologue.

I got this book as research on a piece I am writing about 1968. It was a good account of certain aspects but Kurlansky focused only on left-wing radical student and youth movements to the exclusion of all else. That was OK but he left out quite a bit, even of that. The feeling of rage and even any direct quotation of the insane, ridiculous demands that a lot of these groups made were completely left out. There was little talk of anything outside the rarified world of student radicalism. The assassination of MLK got a page or so while the occupation and riots at Columbia got a chapter. Kurlansky goes extensively into student movements in Poland and Czechoslovakia without probing too deeply into the anti-democratic natures of those systems. So while this book was great in a lot of the details of things like the revolt in France or the Prague Spring and had a fairly whitewashed and one-sided apologia for the Chicago Convention Riots, again with few or no actual quotations from the radicals who specifically went to get in a fight with the brutal Chicago cops. Worth reading but far from a full picture.

**read by Christopher Cazenove
app 16.25 hrs

"... Samuel Elliot Morrison, at 81, one of the most respected American historians said, 'We have passed through abnormal periods before this. Periods of disorder and violence that seemed horrendous and insoluble at the time, yet we survived as a nation. The genius of our democracy is its room for compromise, our ability to balance liberty with authority. And I am convinced that we will strike a new balance this time and achieve in the process a new awareness of human relationships among our people.' "
-Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World

My friend Darlene recommended this book and I was eager to read it because we have similar tastes in books. I didn’t like it as much as she did. I suspect that had to do with the Audible narrator and the quality of the recording. The narrator had a British accent. While the book did portray events around the world most of it took place in the US and the narrator mispronounced quite a few names and places (e.g., Betty FREE-dan instead of Free-DAN) which was distracting.

That aside, everyone knows 1968 was a tumultuous year for the US but it is surprising to learn it was an extremely tumultuous year worldwide (though perhaps it shouldn’t be). The juxtaposition is interesting and eye-opening.

My recommendation is to skip the Audible version and get a copy from the library if it sounds interesting.

This is a very good popular history for those of us who did not experience the sixties. I especially liked that the book took a global approach and was not simply focused on the U.S.

In 1968 I was a freshman/sophomore in high school. I always felt that if I had been five years older I would have been a hippie in Grant Park. This book put a lot of the events of that year into perspective. I didn't realize that the invasion of Czechoslovakia happened during the Democratic convention. I didn't know there was a student uprising and massacre in Mexico just before the Olympics. I'm glad to have read a historical account of what I lived through but certainly didn't understand.

This was the first of three books I read in 2018 that chronicle the year 1968, often referred to as one of the single most tumultuous years in American history:

1968: The Year That Rocked the World - Mark Kurlansky
The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America - Jules Witcover
1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture & the Shaping of a Generation - Charles Kaiser

Of the three, I really looked forward to The Year the Dream Died. Its author, Jules Witcover, was a veteran newspaper reporter who covered the 1968 presidential campaign.

I am fascinated by the year as a crucible year in American history. On the first day of 1968, I was 2 years, 2 months, and one day old, so I have no memory of that year. All of what I know of that year is entirely what I've experienced secondhand--on TV, in history books, magazines, and other media.

When I was in my twenties, none of above books existed. There were no long-form studies of the year as a window to understanding the 1960s. Seeing a void I wanted to fill, I decided I wanted to write a book about the year. But after some initial outlining and research, I knew I didn't have the pedigree to write the book, and that it was best left to a more experienced writer who actually reported during the era. (That's why I was especially interested in Witcover's book.)

I began with the Kurlansky book because he's a bestselling author who wrote a noteworthy book about the history of salt (Salt: A World History).

Having read 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, I can say that the title is ostensibly true, albeit ambiguous. 1968 did rock the world--but the title suggests a more expansive book than it really is.

Early on, Kurlansky mentions that the year is interesting because of the rise of protests, especially on college campuses. As the book progresses, I was somewhat disappointed to learn that protest is the book's overarching theme--as a result, there's a huge amount of history of the year that Kurlansky avoids. To wit: two of the central figures of the year, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, barely make appearances; and the Tet offensive, arguably the pivotal moment of the entire Vietnam war, is only glanced at.

Instead, we get a lot of background into the modern histories of Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and Mexico. Did I really need a backgrounder into Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to set up the 1968 Mexico City Olympics? No. Did I really need to find out why Charles de Gaulle ascended again to power in France in the late 1950s in order to understand the student protests in Paris in 1968? Not really. That's all beside the point.

Nevertheless, the backgrounders do work well for Kurlansky at times. To understand the rise of student protests in the United States in 1968, he drops back to the 1950s and explains the rise of the New Left, which was the engine behind the American protest movement. That was well presented. I gained a renewed understanding of why late 1960s protest began, grew, and matured, and it's one of my favorite parts of the book.

Also worth noting is how television grew in importance in the 1960s, and especially how satellite communication dramatically shrank the daily news cycle. Instead of waiting at least a day for news from Vietnam, for example, American nightly news broadcasts began showing what happened that same day. And for the first time, American viewers could see live, as-it-happened video from a flashpoint of news--protesters getting savagely beaten by the Chicago police outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention--so now when I hear the protesters' clarion call, 'The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!' I know better what that meant.

Kurlansky's decision to turn his attention to non-American stories is not entirely disappointing. It's easy to get lost in the American version of 1968--I'm certainly guilty of that, as well. So his effort to shine lights in European venues is acceptable, even if it is only a very small part of the grand stage on which the events of 1968 unfolded.

But again, there's the issue of the title not quite explaining the book. While it would have been more accurate for the publisher to title the book something like 1968: The Year of Protest, it's not exactly a marketable title. What the more ambiguous title did, ultimately, is make me an enthusiastic reader to begin with, but an underwhelmed and slightly disappointed reader at the end, lamenting my expectations at a book that is smaller than it should be.

highly interesting and informative. I love the way it jumps back and forth explaining to the reader what was going on around the world at the same time. a fascinating era and we have a lot of freedoms we take for granted today because of the protesters of the 60s, for this we should be grateful. I would also be interested in reading a similar book focusing more on the uk during this period. recommendations welcome.

The author is unapologetic in acknowledging that he is not a dispassionate historian in writing this book. 1968 was his second year in college and his focus is on the youth movements of the time. Born two and a half years after Kurlansky, I viewed 1968 from a slightly younger perspective.

I most appreciate the breadth of perspective presented. Kurlansky's scope is worldwide reminding us that trends we saw in the US were worldwide. He brings in France, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Mexico and others. He reminds me of names I'd nearly forgotten. I also appreciated his generational self-deprecation. He doesn't fail to mock our foibles and delusions of self-importance.

Whether looking for a trip down memory lane or an introduction to a remarkable year, I recommended it.

In this year 2020, I hear many people say that America has never been more polarized and this is the worst ever. Although I turned 13 in the summer of 1968, I knew it was a incredibly fraught time. There were actual bombings and riots, against the war. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and the Vietnam war and draft waged on. For people on the left, that was the year the bad guys took over and we have never recovered. All the strides of Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Voting Rights, got overshadowed by Vietnam, and then handicapped when Republicans instituted the Southern strategy. And we learned then and are still learning there are more racists than Black people who vote. The silent majority. It has never been the same. This book looks at 1968 from a world-wide perspective--Mexico's annihilation of the student demonstrations, the 1968 Olympics, Czechoslavokia, North Korea, France, Spain, the unrest was worldwide. I learned so much and was reminded of so much. A significant book.