- Hardcover: 464 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (Dec 30 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0345455819
- ISBN-13: 978-0345455819
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 816 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#181,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Audiobooks > Cassette > Thriller
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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
By any measure, it was a remarkable year. Mentioning the Tet offensive, the My Lai massacre, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the Prague Spring and its backlash gives only the merest impression of how eventful and transformative the year must have felt at the time. As Kurlansky (Cod, Salt, etc.) has made the phrase "changed the world" a necessary component of subtitles for books about mundane objects, his choice to focus on a year that so "rocked" the world is appropriate. To read this book is to be transported to a very specific past at once more naive and more mature than today; as Kurlansky puts it, it was a time of "shocking modernism" and "quaint innocence," a combination less contradictory than it first appears. The common genesis of demonstrations occurring in virtually every Western nation was the war in Vietnam. Without shortchanging the roles of race and age, Kurlansky shrewdly emphasizes the rise of television as a near-instantaneous (and less packaged than today) conduit of news as key to the year's unfolding. To his credit, Kurlansky does not overdo Berkeley at the expense of Paris or Warsaw or Mexico City. The gains and costs of the new ethic of mass demonstration are neatly illustrated by the U.S. presidential campaign: the young leftists helped force the effective abdication of President Lyndon Johnson - and were rewarded with "silent majority" spokesman Richard Nixon. 1968 is a thorough and loving (perhaps a bit too loving of the boomer generation) tapestry - or time capsule.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Although it might have seemed logical to follow his successful books Cod (1997) and Salt (2002) with Olive Oil, Kurlansky has a different agenda this time out. But what can be gained from yet another Boomer report on the 1960s? Surprisingly, quite a bit. In examining the momentous events of 1968, he refolds the map so the U.S. is no longer the center of student protest. Though this "spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world"--including countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, and Mexico--may have drawn oxygen from the U.S. civil rights movement, other fuel for the fires was locally available: intense generational differences, hatred of the Vietnam War, and the rise of TV news. The role of media resonates throughout. As events unfold season by season, we're reminded that this was indeed the dawn of Marshall McLuhan's "global village." And if we're stirred at remembering the passion of the young protesters, we may be sobered to consider whether we're now living in philosopher Herbert Marcuse's age of technological anesthesia. Despite a sometimes torrential flow of facts and figureheads, Kurlansky's writing remains accessible. He is as adept at discerning the way people move machines as he has been at discussing innovation's impact on people. This is very fine--and surprisingly timely-- although its scope and complexity may keep it from finding the broad popularity of the author's earlier works, where we delighted in the surprising histories of ordinary things. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
An absorbing overview of an important year,
By David Katz (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (Hardcover)
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."
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you were there you understand, if not, .....!,
By
This review is from: 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (Hardcover)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
When 1968 becomes 2004,
By Brent Green "Author of Marketing to Leading-E... (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (Hardcover)
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.
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