The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky

   1999; 359 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : World History; Spain; France; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    The Basques.  Like most people, I’ve heard of them, but don’t know much about them.

 

    I vaguely remember them making headlines back in the 1970s for killing Spanish policemen by remotely detonating bombs.  So I’m pretty sure the Basques are concentrated in some area of Spain.

 

    They have their own language too.  It seems neat that they’re maintaining their heritage, but jeez, if you live in Spain, shouldn’t you be speaking Spanish?  I also recall that their language bears no resemblance to any other European tongue, which makes it a mystery as to where they came from and when they showed up.

 

    I’m a lover of History, so my ignorance about the Basques is embarrassing.  Fortunately, one of my favorite History authors, Mark Kurlansky, wrote a book on them, The Basque History of the World.

 

    Let’s find out why the Basques don’t like to speak anything but Basque.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mark Kurlansky divides The Basque History of the World into three sections, namely:

        Section 1 : The Survival of Euskal Herria

        Section 2 : The Dawn of Euskadi

        Section 3 : Euskadi Askatuta

 

    Those titles represent a progression in the self-identity of Basques.  “Euskal Herria” means “the Land where Euskera (“Basque”) is spoken”, and simply denotes a place.  “Euskadi” is a word coined by a Basque nationalist, Sabino Arana, and can be roughly translated as “Euskera speakers together”, and implying that it is a country, not merely a location.  “Euskadi Askatuta” means “Free Basqueland” and recognizes that achieving an independent Basque nation may necessitate a revolution.

 

    Each section has an introduction plus 4-6 chapters, and things close with a "Postscript" titled “The Death of a Basque Pig”.  The book chronicles the Basque history from the earliest writings about them (courtesy of the Romans since the Basque ancestors left no written records) up through the 1990s (the time of publication).  A lot of the latter chapters go decade-by-decade, starting with the 1930s; many of the earlier chapters use the clever template “The Basque Xxx” format (“The Basque Cake”, “The Basque Whale”, “The Basque Beret”, “The Basque Ear”, etc.) to pique the reader's interest.

 

    The Basque History of the World nicely combines both historically important events, such as the importance of the math formula “4 + 3 = 1” and the idiocy of witch trials, with enlightening trivial tidbits, such as recipes for cat dishes, which sounds yucky, but are useful when the Spaniards are besieging your city and you're starving.  I chuckled when the renowned “Bilbo swords” were mentioned; they have nothing to do with Hobbits.  I came away with a much greater appreciation as to what Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” masterpiece is all about, and was sobered by the fatalistic Basque adage “una bache mas, un cabron menos”, which I'll leave for you to look up the translation, or read this book.

 

    Mark Kurlansky includes various maps, drawings, and photos throughout the book.  Some of the latter could use a bit of computer-enhancement, but maybe that’s just a printing issue with the paperback format I read.  The Index at the back of the book comes in handy, although it’s limited to proper nouns.  Beyond the “basted cat” entrée already mentioned, there are various other Basque culinary recipes mixed in with the text .  This is a Mark Kurlansky trademark in the books he writes, and they sound delicious, but they are wasted on me since my cooking skills are abysmal.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 438 ratings and 240 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.87/5 based on 4,409 ratings and 422 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Auto de fe (n., phrase) : a public ceremony during which the sentences upon those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were read and after which the sentences were executed by secular authorities.

 

Excerpts...

    By the sixteenth century, witchcraft should have seemed a ridiculously old-fashioned accusation.  In 787, Charlemagne had outlawed the execution of witches and made it a capital crime to burn a witch.  A tenth-century Church law, Canon Episcopi, demanded that priests preach against belief in witchcraft as superstition.  By the fourteenth-century, stories of witchcraft were widely dismissed among educated circles as a primitive belief of peasants.

    But by the late sixteenth century, the Canon Episcopi, which had been universal Church law, was being circumvented by the claim that society was faced with a new and more virulent form of witchcraft and therefore the old laws did not apply.  (pg. 93)

 

    The Basques are not isolationists.  They never wanted to leave Europe.  They only wanted to be Basque.  Perhaps it is the French and the Spanish, relative newcomers, who will disappear in another 1,000 years.  But the Basques will still be there, playing strange sports, speaking a language of ks and xs that no one else understands, naming their houses and facing them toward the eastern sunrise in a land of legends, on steep green mountains by a cobalt sea—still surviving, enduring by the grace of what Juan San Martin called Euskaldun bizi nahia, the will to live like a Basque.  (pg. 351)

 

Revolutions are always easier to admire from across the border.  (pg. 135)

    The editing is good in The Basque History of the World; I only noticed two typos: finely/finally and peeled/pealed.  As you’d expect of a Historical Non-Fiction tome, the text is incredibly clean: just a single “damn” which got in only because it was part of a direct quotation.

 

    I did find one “fact” in the book to take issue with.  On page 138, the author asserts that the word “honcho” is of Basque origin, coming from their “jauntxo”, meaning a wealthy, powerful, rural landowner.  Plausible, but every other etymological source on the Internet says "honcho" comes from the Japanese word “hancho” meaning a group leader, and brought back to the US by servicemen stationed in Japan.  Methinks somebody in Basqueland was pulling Mark Kurlansky’s leg.

 

    Also, it should be noted that there is a definite pro-Basque, anti-Spanish slant to The Basque History of the World, particularly when the subject is the iron-fisted Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.  I doubt that Mark Kurlansky will offer any apologies for this, but I do recall one of the Basque nationalist groups, the “ETA”, being classified as a Terrorist Group due to the bombings they carried out against the Spanish police back in the 70s.

 

    8 Stars.  Overall, The Basque History of the World gave me a much better understanding of history – both ancient and recent – of the Basque people, the Basque culture, the Basque heroes, and most of all, the Basque hopes for a country of their own.  Such aspirations may or may not be realistic, but they certainly are inspirational.

Milk! - Mark Kurlansky

   2018; 343 pages.  Full Title: Milk! A 10,000-Year Food Fracas.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Food History; Cookbooks; Non-Fiction; Farming; Dairy Science.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Once upon a time, you didn’t go to the supermarket for your milk, it was delivered to your doorstep on a daily basis, and it came in a glass bottle, not a carton.  There was a thick-papered cap on top, sealed with a twist, with a circular sticker in its middle bearing the milk company’s logo or name.

    Every morning, the milkman put your order in a small box (capacity was about 6 bottles) that was on your front porch.  You let him know what you wanted the next time he delivered by sticking a note in one of the empty, washed bottles that you put in the box.  Recycling was fashionable way back then.

    Because the bottles were clear glass, you could actually see the milk you received.  It had two phases – mostly “regular” milk on the bottom, and a bit of thicker cream on top.  Nowadays, milk is “homogenized”, meaning it only has one phase.  Back then, you could do your own  homogenizing (i.e., shaking it well before opening it), but occasionally your mom would scoop the cream out and use it in some recipe she was making.

    If you lived in a cold-weather place, like Pennsylvania for instance, you’d occasionally step out the door on a winter’s day to get your morning milk delivery, and find that it had frozen.  You’d know this because the solids at the top had expanded and pushed the paper cap upwards, leaving a weird-looking white “collar”.  This was no big deal, you still used the milk without any concern about contamination.

    This may sound like 19^th-century history to you, and it is, but it still was true into the 1950’s, and Mark Kurlansky’s recounting of it in Milk – A 10,000-Year Food Fracas triggered a Proustian reaction (a what?!  see below) in my long-term memory banks.

What’s To Like...

    Mark Kurlansky divides the 20 chapters of Milk! (we’ll dispense with the subtitle for the sake of brevity) into three parts, namely:

    Part 1 : The Safety of Curds (Chapters 1-9)

        The history of milk and other dairy products.

    Part 2 : Drinking Dangerously  (Chapters 10-14)

        Science and technology make milk safe to drink.

    Part 3 : Cows and Truth  (Chapters 15-20)

        Current and recent hot-topic dairy debates, and the answers.

    My favorite chapters (YMMV) were:

    Ch 01 : The Taste of Sweetness

        The ancient history of milk-drinking.

    Ch 03 : Cheesy Civilization

        The history of cheese-making.

    Ch 09 : Everyone’s Favorite Milk

        The history of ice cream.

   Ch 16 : China’s Growing Tolerance

        The changing Chinese milk and dairy products tastes.

    Chs 19 & 20 : The Search for Consensus & Risky Initializations

        The author’s views on the topics listed in the first excerpt below.

    I was surprised at the number of foods that are derived from milk and its byproducts: curds, whey, pancakes, sillabubs (huh?), possets (huh?), cheese butter, shortbreads, griddle cakes, mysa & syra (wha?), yogurt, sour cream, dodines (wha?), porridge, custards, powdered milk, applesauce (really?), cottage cheese, pudding (yum!), ice cream (double yum!), crème brûlée, ices, fudge, marshmallow fluff, cream sauces, chowders, and many more.  The origins and history of each are detailed in this book.

    I also learned several "dairy" pejoratives along the way.  “Kaaskoppen” is Flemish for “cheese heads”, which was their insult word for the Dutch.  Once upon a time the Japanese referred to us Westerners as “bata  dasaku”, meaning “butter stinker”, due to our disgusting dairy tastes.  And the Persians have an expression, “boro mastetobezan”, which translates to “go beat your own yogurt”, an idiom meaning “mind your own business”.

    I was amazed to learn that the majority of humans (60%) are lactose-intolerant, and saddened to read about the terrible impact “swill milk” had on infant mortality rates.  There are some Roman Empire era recipes included, which are surprisingly "modern-sounding" and at times doubled as medicinal advice.  More importantly, I learned how to make booze from dairy products if I am ever stuck in Iceland.

    My buddy, Moses Maimonides, makes a cameo appearance, so does Velveeta cheese, which was a mainstay in my collegiate cuisine options.  If you have trouble remembering whether it’s “Welsh rabbit”, or “Welsh rarebit”, you can find the answer here, and it might surprise you, and it was enlightening to read what Mark Kurlansky has to say about the GMO fracas.  The drawings and pictures were a nice touch, including a mind-blowing painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (ca. 1311-1348) depicting the Virgin Mary breastfeeding Christ.

Kewlest New Word ...

Proustian (adj.) : relating to or characteristic of the French writer Marcel Proust or his works, particularly with reference to the recovery of the lost past and the stimulation of unconscious memory.

Excerpts...

    Milk is a food with a history – it has been argued about for at least the past ten thousand years.  It is the most argued-over food in human history, which is why it was the first food to find its way into a modern scientific laboratory and why it is the most regulated of all foods.

    People have argued over the importance of breastfeeding, the proper role of mothers, the healthful versus unhealthful qualities of milk, the best sources of milk, farming practices, animal rights, raw versus pasteurized milk, the safety of raw milk cheese, the proper role of government, the organic food movement, hormones, genetically modified crops, and more.  (pg. 3)

    People do not want to live near a dairy anymore.  Cows defecate and they are extremely flatulent.  This was never an issue with the charming forty-cow farm with the little red barn.  But when a few thousand cows live next door, farting and producing mountains of manure that the farm endeavors to dry out and convert to fertilizer, they are very strong-smelling neighbors.

    Farmers with large herds usually have more manure than their pastureland can absorb.  The total annual waste in the United States is one hundred times more than what is taken in by human sewage treatment plants.  (pg. 319)

“A dessert without cheese is like a lovely lady with only one eye.”  (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin).  (pg. 278 )

    There’s not much to nitpick about Milk!.  The black-&-white pencil drawings of the various cow breeds didn’t impress me; I would have much rather had color photographs/paintings of them.  It was a slow read, but that’s because I was fascinated by all the technical details therein, so that's not really a criticism.  

    It should be noted that there are 126 recipes (by Mark Kurlansky’s count, and I’ll take his word for it) interspersed throughout the book, some from as far back as the first-century A.D. by a cook named Apicius.  Reading though these recipes got tedious after a while, but that’s probably because my culinary skills are legendary, and not in a good way.  I once destroyed my kitchen when trying to make tomato soup from the can.  People with "normal" cooking skills will most likely find these recipes interesting, even to the point of trying some out.

    But overall I found Milk! to be a informative and interesting read, even if I skipped over those pesky recipes.  Milk! is my third Mark Kurlansky book (the other two are reviewed here and here), and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all three.  So if you’re into reading history and science, or concerned about food safety, or want to be well-versed when topics like GMO’s and breastfeeding come up at your next social engagement, or just want to try making some strange new dishes, Milk! is bound to be your cup of tea.

    8½ Stars.  Fur more Mark Kurlansky books are on my Kindle or my TBR shelf: Salt, Cod, The Basque History, and The Big Oyster.  I suspect all the food-themed ones will also have recipes in them.  We shall see.

Paper - Mark Kurlansky

   2016; 354 pages (includes prologue and timeline).  Full Title : Paper – Paging Through History.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Non-Fiction; Technology; World History.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Mark Kurlansky poses an interesting question at the start of Paper:   What do humans do that other animals do not?

    At first thought, that might seem like an easy question, but finding an answer may take a bit more time than you’d think.

    Yes, our opposable thumbs give us all sorts of dexterity advantages, but lots of other animals have them too: apes, of course, but also pandas, opossums, certain frogs; and some birds, although the latter's is merely an opposable digit.  And as for the skills our thumbs enable us to do – carrying, climbing, grasping, holding, etc. – creatures without thumbs can also do all of these.

    We humans can build things, and alter our environment, but the author points out that so does a beaver when he builds a dam.  We wage war against others of our species, but so do ants.  We can laugh, play, and joke around, but so do cats.  We communicate with one another, but so do bees, wolves, and monkeys.

    No, the one thing that sets us apart is our desire, and our ability, to record.  We’ve been doing it since we were living in caves – drawing glyphs on walls, making scribbles on rocks, and eventually scratching grooves into clay tablets.  But those are all painstaking ways of leaving a message.  So it’s not surprising that mankind came up (independently, and in several locations in both global hempisheres) with an easier medium to leave marks on: Paper.

What’s To Like...

    The book’s title might seem misleading to some, as paper has hundreds of uses (gift-wrapping, tissues, toilet paper, etc.) most of which only receive passing mention here.  Mark Kurlansky focuses mainly on paper being used for communicating or for artistic efforts.  He also examines paper’s forerunners (clay tablets à papyrus à parchment à paper), and its purported replacement (paper à e-mail).  Throughout the book, and especially in the chapters covering the distant past, World History gets just as much ink as Papermaking Technology, and I greatly enjoyed that.

    Paper is divided into 18 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue.  The earlier chapters are a nice mix of chronological and geographical happenings, covering the various places when and where alphabets, writing, and drawing developed.  Such inventions spurred the need for something to write upon and devices to print with.  Once we hit modern times (around Chapter 14) the theme switches to technological advances, such as the birth of photography and the encyclopedia, new raw materials for papermaking, innovative uses for paper, how the paper industry copes with present-day environmental issues, and last-but-not-least, e-books.

    I was impressed by just how many raw materials have been used for making paper.  Some of the main ones are: flax, cotton, rags, bark, silk, linen, hemp, jute, bamboo, agave, trees, seaweed, esparto grass, abaca, and scraps from sugar cane harvesting.  Rags may seem out of place in that list, but it was actually the major starting material used in America to make paper for hundreds of years.

    The book is a trivia buff’s delight.  Some of the things mentioned that resonated with me are:

Jackson Pollock, Moses Maimonides, Li Po, and Fibonacci  (four of my personal heroes)

1001 Arabian Nights  (Kurlansky claims it is “essentially erotic literature”)

Pencils  (first made in England in 1565)

Book Fairs!  (first held in 1541)

Haiku and Origami  (I’ve written some Haiku, and am fascinated by Origami)

Calligraphy  (I practiced writing Chinese characters when studying Mandarin)

The Kraft Process and the Sulphite Process  (my company sells products for these)

Baseball Cards!  (I had thousands as a kid)

The Iliad and the Odyssey  (I will probably read one or both of these later this year)

Massachusetts  (named for a dialect of the Algonquin language)

Chiaroscuro  (say what?)

    There are some kewl drawings spread throughout the book.  The extras in the back include a Timeline, Acknowledgements, and extensive Bibliography, and a 25-page Index.  Mark Kurlansky has written a series of historical non-fiction books with one-word titles.  I’ve read two (“1968” and now this one), and have two more (“Cod” and “Salt”) waiting on my Kindle.  Based on Amazon and Goodreads reviews, those latter two are regarded as the author’s best efforts, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

Kewlest New Word…

Xylographer (n.) : a person who makes engravings on wood, especially for printing.

Excerpts...

    These small, portable books, which Aldus called libelli portatiles, are credited with changing people’s reading habits.  This, of course, is the technological fallacy at work once again.  Aldus did not change reading habits.  Rather, a change in reading habits prompted him to produce a different kind of book.  He could see that books were too big for the way new readers wanted to use them.  Books were no longer read only by learned monks and scholars at stands in monasteries and castles but by a broad range of people, especially in Italy and France.  People wanted to read while lounging in chairs at a café; they wanted to take books to work to read on breaks or on trips.  (pg. 137)

    The expansion in reading was not simply a by-product of the revolutions in France and America, but a widespread phenomenon.  It could even be argued, as Diderot did, that the spread of reading and its accompanying spread of knowledge led to rebellion against the old order.  This was why that old order, the aristocracies and clergy of Europe, were tremendously fearful of this increasing popularity of books and newspapers and reading in general.  In the late eighteenth century, people of all economic classes, rural and urban, the well educated and the little educated, men and women, young and old – everyone started reading more.  (pg. 237)

 As the scribes of old were keenly aware, literacy is empowering and a threat to despotic rule.  (pg. 186 )

    I don’t really have any quibbles with Paper, but have to admit that at times - mostly during the technical passages -  it was a bit of a slog to read.  I don’t think this is in any way the fault of the author; this is my second Mark Kurlansky book, and his writing skills are fantastic.

    Instead, I blame the subject matter.  I suspect it is difficult to make the manufacture of paper an exciting topic due to its inherently technical nature.

     I can relate.  I once had to write a 200-word essay on “Mining in Siberia”.  I was being disciplined for some sort of transgression in junior high, this was before there was anything like Google, Wikipedia, and the Internet, and it certainly didn't merit a special trip to the city library.  My only resource was the encyclopedia at the junior high school library, which, not surprisingly, had very few words to say about the subject.  It was an extremely time-consuming piece of penance, accomplished only by me getting very wordy and spreading a lot of bullsh*t in my essay.

    That was 200 words about Russian mining.  This book is 350 pages about making paper.  I’d love to know what Mark Kurlansky’s thoughts were as he sat down to write this book.

    8 Stars.  Let’s close this review with a pair of trivia questions from Paper; one serious, the other more tongue-in-cheek.  1.) What was the world’s first novel and when was it published?  2.) What, according to Pliny, are humans incapable of doing that other (similarly equipped) animals can?  (Answers in the Comments section.)

1968 - Mark Kurlansky

   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:

    The Winter of Our Discontent  (chs. 1-4)

    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.