2005;
480 pages. Full Title : 1968 – The Year That Rocked The World. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Non-Fiction; World History. Overall Rating : 9*/10.
1968 was a tumultuous year for me. I graduated from high school in June, and a
few weeks later my family packed up everything, formed a U-Haul caravan with
another family, and traveled the length of Route 66 from eastern Pennsylvania
to the just-being-developed community of
Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where my dad had been promised a job and a house.
When we arrived, there was no job and no
house. So for the entire month of August
we camped in tents on the sandy shores of Lake Havasu. During that time, I added a new word to my
vocabulary: MONSOON,
which came up every afternoon and obliterated our tents, along with everyone
else’s, imbuing every possession we had with millions of grains of gritty
sand. We sweated in 115° heat combined
with lakeside humidity, we showered in the park’s public restroom facilities,
and we cooked over a portable Coleman stove.
After
30 days, I was mercifully allowed to fly back to Pennsylvania, to start my
freshman year at Penn State, and get introduced to being out on my own, a
couple thousand miles from my parents and siblings. Needless to say, that too was a tremendous
upheaval in my life.
I
vowed never to go camping again, and never to return to the hellhole called
Arizona. I am happy to say I made good
on one of those two vows.
Why
do I recount this? Well, according to
Mark Kurlansky, the entire world was having that kind of year in 1968.
What’s To Like...
The hypothesis is given at the very start of
the book: “There
has never been a year like 1968”.
The focus is on the unrest that was seething all over the globe that
year, and the protests that seemed to spring up spontaneously therefrom.
I
thought the structure of the book was great.
Mark Kurlansky divides 21 chapters into four logical and chronological sections:
Prague Spring (chs.
5-13)
The Summer
Olympics (chs. 14-19)
The Fall
of Nixon (chs. 20-21)
There
is heavy emphasis on the history that was unfolding in 1968, which I very much
liked. The main topics examined are:
a.)
the reform movement in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent Russian invasion.
b.) the worldwide protests, especially in the US, of the Vietnam war.
c.) student and worker protests in France, Poland, and Mexico.
d.) US college protests, particularly at Columbia.
e.)
the genocidal war in Biafra.
f.) the violence at the Democratic convention.
g.) the rise of feminism.
h.) the civil rights movement and the rise of Black Power.
i.) the 1968 Olympics.
It
was nice to “re-meet” some people that have long since slipped out of my
mind. Folks like Alexander Dubcek, Abbie
Hoffman, Eugene McCarthy, Stokely Carmichael, Vaclav Havel, and Betty Friedan. I enjoyed the nod to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and the kewl quotes and
intriguing titles that started each chapter.
1968 ties into three other books I’ve read in
recent years: Ravens in the Storm by Carl Oglesby (reviewed here); The
Essential Ginsberg by Allen Ginsberg (reviewed here), and The Harvard
Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin (reviewed here). Mark Kurlansky admits to being prejudiced in
his viewpoint of 1968, having lived through it (he was born in 1948). I appreciated that sort of candor.
For me the best thing about the book was being enlightened by some of
the background “maneuverings” that went on.
For instance, picking a city for a civil rights protest was not a random
selection. Martin Luther King adhered to
a principle that came from Gandhi: To be successful, a non-violent protest must provoke a
violent response. Otherwise, there will
be no press coverage. Selma
was chosen not because it was necessarily more segregated than any other city
in the Deep South, but because its police chief was known to be a violent
bigot. His response to a peaceful
protest march was quite predictable.
Similar planning and tactics by the protest organizers ensured that the
Democratic presidential convention in Chicago would be exceptionally
bloody. When they chanted “the whole world is
watching”, it wasn’t a spontaneous event; it was a declaration that
their carefully-laid strategies had succeeded.
Excerpts...
In June 1969 he
came up with the Weathermen, a violent underground guerrilla group named after
the Bob Dylan lyrics “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind
blows.” In March 1970 they changed their
name to the Weather Underground because they realized that the original name
was sexist. In hindsight, it seems
evident that a guerrilla group started by middle-class men and women who name
their group from a Bob Dylan song will likely be their own worst enemies. (loc. 6504)
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. As Camus wrote in The Rebel, those who long for peaceful times are longing for “not
the alleviation but silencing of misery.” (loc. 6948)
Kindle Details…
The Kindle version of 1968 sells for $9.99
at Amazon. Its related book, 1969, goes for $1.99, but is by a
different author. It is on my Kindle,
waiting to be read. Mark Kurlansky’s
other e-books, all non-fiction, are in the $1.99-$16.99 price range.
Like an unnoticed tree
falling in the forest, if there is a march or a sit-in and it is not covered by
the press, did it happen? (loc.
769 )
Some
Amazon reviewers felt that 1968 “jumped around too much”, from one topic
to another. I didn’t find this to be
true, and felt that the book’s timeline structure (season by season) helped link
the topics to each other. For instance,
at the same time the Democratic convention was going on, the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. That certainly hurt the Democrats, as Nixon
was preaching a “get tough on Communism” message. Still, 1968 is "history" for most readers, but
it’s “old current events” (is that an oxymoron?) for me. Perhaps when it's before one's time, it's harder to follow.
It
also should be recognized that most of the topics can’t be limited to simply events in 1968. The civil rights movement
started in the 50’s; the American involvement in the Vietnam war started in the
early 60’s. You can’t discuss the 1968
dynamics without first recounting the background.
Finally,
the last 13% of the e-book consists of notes, a bibliography, permissions to
use other people’s pictures and texts, and other books by the author. At the tail end of all that are some “extra”
quotes that Mark Kurlansky thought were apropos. All those other bits of miscellany are
skippable, but those final quotes are worth taking the time to look up.
9 Stars.
For me personally, 1968 was a great book, bringing back memories of a
pivotal year in my life. Subtract ½ star if that year is just a history lesson
for you. You’ll still enjoy it, but it
may not resonate quite so much.
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