1968 AND ALL THAT

Mark Kurlansky has set himself the task of writing the history of 1968, a year of rock n roll n rebellions. Much of the focus of the book is on the student movements that erupted across the world, principally in France, the United States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Mexico and Germany, though Kurlansky still finds room to deal with the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war in Biafra, as well as topics such as feminism, and the popular philosophy and literature of the era.

Kurlansky writes in a crisp readable prose, the sections that cover the student movements in the various countries appear to have been covered in a reasonably impartial and thorough manner, though the focus on student movements does seem to be a little overdone for a book that claims to be a history of the whole year. The perversity of this is quite clear when one considers that the actuality of the Vietnam War receives far less coverage than the anti-war movement in the United States and such coverage as there is gives little idea of the reality of that war. The troubles in Northern Ireland receive zero coverage, as does South Africa. Latin American, African, and Asian (the cultural revolution in China is graced with a few paragraphs) coverage is primarily focussed on a single country in each continent: Mexico, Biafra and Vietnam. And then there is the big problem I had with this book . . .

Ever seen the "The Big Lebowski"? In that brilliant film by the brothers Coen there is a character called Walter, the Big Lebowski's bowling buddy. No matter what the subject under discussion is, Walter manages to bring it back to the issue of `Nam. Kurlansky's `Nam is Zionism and Israel.

Firstly there appears to be a problem with emphasis, for example there are well over twenty mentions (often of multiple pages) in the index for Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism and Judaism. In way of comparison the total for Muslims, Islam and Arabs is zero. That problem of emphasis is a relatively minor one in comparison to the out-right lying and propaganda that serves for Kurlansky's coverage of the Middle East. For him Palestinians don't exist as a people, except as terrorists; anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are synonyms; Israel offered back the land it invaded and occupied in 1967 in return for peace; the Israeli government had nothing to do with the settlement of the occupied territories, etcetera, etc. And Kurlansky's source for all this wisdom? In the bibliography section we have one book covering the Middle East, Michael Oren's "Six Days of War". Who is Michael Oren? Currently he is Likud prime minister Netenyahu's man in Washington. The only other "scholar" mentioned is the intensely partisan Zionist Walter Laquer.

Without Kurlansky's nonsense on Israel and Zionism this would be a reasonable book on the Student movements of 1968; not a deep or profound book on that year, but rather on the level of a good television documentary series. With the nonsense, the book is a disgrace and certainly doesn't deserve the back page blurb from Uncut magazine ("combining the rigour of a historian"). To put it mildly, "1968: The year that rocked the world", was a disappointing read.

It's hard to think of a more dramatic year than 1968 (though 2016 comes close): with rioting in the streets, the murders of two beloved figures, the turmoil in Vietnam and in the streets of Prague and Paris, and the mounting fervor of the conservative movement and its untelegenic candidate, 1968 was a watershed year for not just America but the world. Mark Kurlansky does a fantastic job conveying all the high drama of that year in "1968: The Year That Rocked the World."

I'd always been drawn to 1968 as a year worthy of study in no small part because of the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, but I'd rarely found myself thinking about all the other events of the year. Kurlansky's book is a good overview of a year that fundamentally changed so much of the world, sometimes for the worse but often for the better. Social protest movements spread across the world (and conservative heads of state suspected coordinated attacks, but they were usually spontaneous manifestations of an unease with the way that things had always been). From the summer Olympics in Mexico City to the loosening of restrictions in Communist Czechoslovakia, change was in the air. Not all the movements succeeded (if anything, the protests by Yippie radicals outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago mobilized a conservative backlash that helped put the degenerate Richard Nixon into the White House), but the impact of those movements is still felt today in Black Lives Matter protests and demands for equal rights for women and a greater accountability for those who have committed racial or sexual transgressions.

The year 1968 was also an election year, and for a brief moment Robert Kennedy seemed poised to save the soul of the country. But he was not alone; Martin Luther King Jr. was in many ways reduced to a figurehead in the Civil Rights movement, passed by in favor of younger, more militant leaders like Stokely Carmichael. But his assassination in April unleashed a howl of fury in much of the nation, and Kennedy's murder two months later would seemingly put out the calls for social justice that both men in their own ways espoused. But their legacies also include the young people that they inspired at that time, many of whom became leaders in their own right as the decades wore on. And the war in Vietnam began to lose its appeal not just among the young who would be likely to serve in it, but also among the youth of the world, seeing America as pursuing another colonialist policy akin to their European predecessors (and equally doomed to failure, as it turned out). The world rose up in different climes, and different times in the year, to demand that the war in Vietnam come to an end.

The Soviet Union crushed the flowers of the Prague Spring under tank tracks in August, ensuring that it would never be viewed as the savior of Eastern Europe ever again (and setting in motion its own collapse, albeit into a similar style of rule under another degenerate, Vladimir Putin). And the space program, at the end of this most chaotic year, offered a hint of perspective as an Apollo mission tasked with orbiting the moon sent back to the world the first pictures of our planet from a distance, so small and insignificant in the depths of space.

This was a fun read, a great collection of history-as-anecdotes that never failed to amuse, infuriate, or illuminate just what made 1968 so important in world history.

This book came out a decade ago. I think I've owned it for that same length of time - I seem to recall getting it as a freebie at some readers' night at a bookshop. I'd adored everything else by Kurlansky that I'd read, so it seemed like a good deal at the time. And then it just... got lost in the pile of books that I own and haven't got around to reading. As happens all too often. Plus, I overlooked it because after all, 1968 is really quite recent, yeh? And modern history... well, it's just politics. And there's more interesting stuff to read than politics.

I'm not sure what made me pick it up last week. Possibly something I'd been talking about with someone, or I wanted to check something. Who knows; doesn't matter. What matters is I read the introduction and I was hooked. Kurlansky talks about four significant factors that made 1968 stand out: the example of the civil rights movement in the US speaking to a generation that felt alienated and who despised a war being waged by a massive nation against a small one, and all of it occurring at a time when television was becoming a potent force. It's not a unique year - I'm sure you could write this sort of insightful 'biography' for most years, of the twentieth century especially. But it really is a significant year.

(A little quibble about the cover: the Rolling Stones aren't mentioned, so why put Mick with either Tommie Smith or John Carlos, who used the Black Power salute at the Mexico Games, and a soldier in Vietnam, and a rocket? It doesn't really make sense. If they wanted to symbolise the student movement, then surely Abbie Hoffmann or a SDCC poster or similar would have done the trick. It irked me. )

From the point of view of a historian, Kurlansky is quite open about the impossibility of his being completely objective, and in fact rejects the idea of any historian doing so. He was born in 1948 and hence experienced a little bit of what he's writing about, especially the anti-Vietnam stuff. This comes through in how he writes, but how much that's a problem is going to depend on how hungry you are for that impossibly elusive objectivity - and how hard you find it to sift the presentation of information to find whatever you think is 'true'. I think that the medium for conveying the message is worth it, and you just read with that in mind.

And this book is worth reading both for the style - which is intensely readable - and for the content. Kurlansky eschews too many footnotes (and in fact makes that endnotes, and without numbers in the text), so it reads less like a formal history and more as an engaging narrative. Yes the historian in me occasionally frowned at some of the things he says without appearing to back it up. That's what you get for more conversational-style history... and actually that suggests what this book is like: it felt more like the book of the series. I can easily imagine each of the chapters here being turned into an episode of television.

The absorbing nature of the narrative is aided by the astonishing story that's being told. Bare bones: Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy are both killed in this year; there are student riots/protests/movements all over the US and the birth/growth of significant student movements, as well as in France, Germany, Mexico, Poland and Czechoslovakia, sometimes accompanied by workers' movements; the Olympic Games in Mexico; attempt at revolution in Czechoslovakia that's put down by Soviet tanks; civil war in Nigeria; unrest in Israel; the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; Nixon winning the US election; Apollo 8; race issues, gender issues, political issues... . Yeh. It was a big year.

Kurlansky does a wonderful job of putting actions in different places in perspective - connecting them to one another. This is particularly true of the discussion around the student movement, which is really the heart of the book. And there's something to be warned about: although there is quite a good discussion (IMO) of the Polish and Czech experience, especially, this is still at heart an American book. The Nigeria/Biafra 'conflict' is dealt with seriously and soberly, but it doesn't get nearly as much air time as the attempts at student sit-ins around American universities. Is that a problem? Depends on what you're wanting out of the book. And it depends on what you think actually made more of an impact around the world at the time, and since then. The by-line is "The year that rocked the world." Did American students flagrantly defying authorities, and students being beaten by police, 'rock the world' more than a million people dying in Biafra? ... unfortunately, possibly yes, for several reasons - not least of which is the one that Kurlansky himself spends quite some time discussing: television. There were cameras rolling when students got beaten in the streets of Chicago and New York. Not so much in Nigeria. Plus, the reality is that America had and continues to have more of an impact on world attitudes and trends that Nigeria does - for good or ill, in terms of ascertaining impact it doesn't matter. My point is more that if you want a book that balances every country's experience equally, this is not for you. It's more than the history of one nation but less than a complete history of the world. So check your expectations first.

This is a really fabulous book for bringing out the important issues and the people of this one year. He sets the events and the people into context - casually dropping in Yasir Arafat and Bill Clinton, among others, for future connections, as well as giving background on Martin Luther King and the development of Palestinian identity and the Nigerian conflict and issues in Czechoslovakia. It's not quite a history of the entire decade but it's more than just a history of a year.

I love that this book ends with optimism. 1968 itself is such a torrid confusion of hope and despair that going from "racism, poverty, the wars in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Biafra" to the picture of our little blue and white and green marble, as seen from Apollo 8 going around the moon, seems peculiarly appropriate. And then to conclude with Dante - "Through a round aperture I saw appear / Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, / Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars."

This book can be found on Fishpond.

As a young historian-in-training, I found this book to be a terrific page-turner - an exhilarating read. It really puts you there. And Kurlansky is honest about his "biases" - I don't like that term, I prefer "perspective" - and that allows him to write about these events with the immediacy he experienced - as he puts it with the thrill of participation instead of trying and failing at objectivity. I think more writers would benefit from this approach. In fact, I quote from him in the Author's Note to my first book, "Cleantech Con Artists: A True Vegas Caper."

I love good twentieth century history, and I love the authors voice and sly humor. I didn’t realize 1968 was such a global phenomenon. A global population boom plus television and the Cold War lead to almost spontaneous student uprisings all over the globe. I also didn’t realize how out of control the Chicago police were. Recent history benefits from the experience of contrasting received cultural memory with actual accounts. I was shocked and disheartens at how much of the protests (including civil rights) were performed for the television cameras. Now we have people fighting for the attention of social media and I realize more why conservatives want social media to be treated as a public square and not as a forum provided by private companies. This book invoked lots of thought about protest, social engineering, and violence. Some say that If America survived the challenges of 1968 it can withstand the challenges of today. I think 1968 improved America yet it also left wounds which weakened America.

What I learned: Dr Spock was arrested for encouraging draft dodging. Palestinian becomes an identity in 1968. Bob Dylan broke his neck in a motorcycle crash. First successful heart transplant was in Cape Town, and yes a young black man’s heart was used to save a wealthier older white man. Castro and Che have law degrees. RFK had no secret service protection. The 68 republican convention in Miami also featured the cities first race riot. “Jane crow laws” “aunt Tom’s” Cuba’s oxymoronic institutional revolution party. George Forman seems like an Uncle Tom compared to Muhammad Ali. Pierre Trudeau of Canada was the most interesting man in the world. West Germany had so many nazis. Colin Powell tried to cover up the My Lai massacre. Abbie Hoffman’s American flag shirt was a scandal at the time and he is older than the generation he led.

I was first introduced to Mark Kurlanski in his book called Salt. I figured that if he could make something as boring as salt interesting he could do it for anything. in many ways, 1968 was anything but boring, being 6 years before I was born, it was a year I had heard about but didn't experience. I expected this book to cover only events in America and Vietnam. instead, Kurlansky actually covers events throughout Europe as well as America and, to some degree, China and Japan. it does seem that 1968 saw many demonstrations and protests that were connected by the common factor of youth. I don't have the information to know if 68 saw more protests than 78 or 88 or any other year. it does feel like it was a year of changed tactics and the outrageousness of the protests. The changing medium of television and the ability, and the recognition, that protest could be made for television and be made MORE on television than they might have been. in reality. THAT for certain, is a change that we still live with today. if that was the legacy of 1968, then I have to say that it's not a very good legacy. it's true that earlier generations were more easily. silenced by their elders, but today we live in a society where every minority of one expects to have everything they say. listen to and acted on. Near the end of the book, the difficulties that came from melding student protests with working class protest became apparent. The realities and the situations facing college students were very different from those facing working adults. I think the fact the two were not able to operate together might cast some doubt on the validity, or at least the applicability, of the demand of students in college.
Overall, the book was informative and enjoyable and I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure that it elevated my opinion of 1968's activities.

This book brought back a lot of memories of my youth.(I turned nineteen in 1968.) The author does a good job providing a digest of many of the events of that year, but at the beginning of the book the author offers the proposition that this is such an important year that it changed the world. While I do not question that many of the events that occurred that year, did much to alter history, the author fails to, in any great detail, address what he believes are the results of this seminal year.

Onvan : 1968: The Year That Rocked the World - Nevisande : Mark Kurlansky - ISBN : 345455827 - ISBN13 : 9780345455826 - Dar 480 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2001

This book gave a thorough overview of the major events of the year and their associated chaos. It also did a good job establishing context, like talkign about the Mexican Revolution and how it played into the Tlatelolco Massacre. I really wish the boook had toned down the inclusion of profanity. The book ended on a wonderful note describing the eloquent balm the Apollo 8 mission brought to a weary world. I played the end part on the audiobook multiple times because it was so eloquent.

در واقع ۲.۵
در واقع دارم معرفت بخرج میدم که ۱ ۲ نمیدم چون هیچ اطلاعاتی بجز فیلم رویابین های برتولوچی از ۶۸ نداشتم و حالا با خواندن این کتاب پرچانه چیزهایی میدانم.

از عیوب بزرگ این کتاب، که باب آشنایی من با آن از طریق استوری چند نفر در اینستاگرام بود که بنظر آدمهای فهمیده ای بودند ولی بگمانم خودشان هم نخوانده بودندش، و اینجا هم کسی ریویویی برایش ننوشته، این است که «از هر دری سخنی» است. بد نیست ها، ولی هزینه-اثربخش نیست برای منی که کلی درگیری و کتاب نخوانده دارم و باید در ۵۵۲ صفحه ای دست و پا بزنم که کمی از زاپاتای مکزیکی مرحوم میگوید، گزارش های مفصل از انتخابات امریکا که من واقعا نفهمیدم چه شد و احساس نیاز میکنم در مورد فرآیند انتخابات شان چیزی بخوانم در دوره آینده، و کلی اطلاعات فرعی اما گاها جالب دیگه. شاید نویسنده ادعا کند میخواستم کاملا شما را در کانتکستی قرار دهم که جنبش های دانشجویی استارت خوردند. ولی خب غلط کرده، برو سر اصل مطلب دیگه آخه لامصب. حالا لاشه، محدود نبودن مطالبش به فرانسه را ارج می نهم
اطلاعات اضافه بر جنبش های دانشجویی در فصول مربوط به اروپای شرقی تحت سیطره شوروی اما خوب و به جا بودند و از بحث اصلی جدایی ناپذیر. مطالب جنگ ویتنام هم بدک نبود آوردنش.
شخصیت دوبچک را دوست داشتم

در کل باید بگویم کلیت می ۶۸ آنقدر که از دور برایم جذاب بود انتظارم را برآورده نکرد، دستکم روایت این کتاب از وقایع راضی کننده نبود. گرچه مهم بود. بصیرت افزا بود.

Bien en cuanto a dato duro. Interesante casi siempre, aunque la exposición peque de lentitud y ligera pedantería en ocasiones.

Several years ago I read Rick Perlstein's well-researched but very depressing "Nixonland" while working for the UN in the Republic of Georgia, and from that read I'd already gathered that the U.S. had some very ugly ethical, political, and geopolitical truths to tackle in 1968. I have also heard that we are always nostalgic for the years both we and our parents were on the cusp of adulthood, and my father graduated high school in 1968--so of course I picked up this book. In it, Kurlansky takes the reader on a trip around the world in that year to demonstrate that '68 was a time of great change, sparked by young people (usually students) and the advent of television to broadcast the aforementioned ugly truths worldwide almost immediately. Angry crowds were squaring off against riot police not only in Chicago (this book certainly supports Perlstein's narrative on Mayor Daley's behavior at the Democratic Convention), but Warsaw, Mexico City, Paris, and Prague. Along the way, "1968" takes the reader into some very interesting places, with revelations like "In 1968 Julius Lester published his seminal work, 'Look Out, Whitey! Black Power's Gon' Get Your Mama!'" and some provocative accounts of Charles deGaulle's actions under pressure. I didn't know that Democratic candidate Eugene McCarthy wrote poetry, that a Swedish count was dodging anti-aircraft fire to deliver humanitarian assistance to austere runways in Biafra, or the significance of Nelson Rockefeller's campaign for the Republican Party's future. I don't agree with all Kurlansky's conclusions. His argument that what happened in Czechoslovakia represented the beginning of the end for the USSR certainly provokes some thought, however. (Full disclosure--I read this book during a visit to Prague, and that city's cobblestones will never look the same to me again.) "Antiwar activists," he writes, "did not end American hegemonic warfare but only changed the way it was pursued and how it was sold to the public. In opposing the draft, the antiwar activists showed the generals what they had to do to continue waging war." His language is hyperbolic, but the journey from Walter Cronkite taking off his glasses to Nixon's favorite media consultant running a certain modern and definitely not objective news channel is worth our attention; and the U.S. military HAS been extremely effective as an all-volunteer force. Kurlansky tells us in his Introduction point-blank that as he was 20 years old while all this was going on so he's biased, that "fairness is possible but true objectivity is not," so readers who dig history and political science have to consider that as they turn every page of this book. Again, I don't agree with all his perspectives, but I did enjoy delving into the events that shaped who we are and how we developed since this incredible year.