Customer Rating:  
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: For me the book lacked precisely what the subject should have been about: imagination. Its focus is mainly on politics (the emergence of a radical politics); especially American politics. And yet the political is, like Moses, a guide destined never to experience the true wonder of '68, which was more anti-politics and anarchist than commentators such as Kurlansky tend to acknowledge. After all, we only have to look around us to see what happened when the sixty-eighters themselves came to power and became, what, New Labour? There is a quote in one of the chapters that when the '68 generation became thirty years old, it was at least certain that they would not be working in advertising. Au contraire, mon ami. They turned out to be one of the most media-friendly (and savvy and manipulative) generations of them all.
The book is a compendium of the key historico-political movements of the time; and for this reader a very dry read because of that. The true spirit of '68, however, lies elsewhere; in May in Paris (to which only one short chapter, seemingly star-struck by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and informative about little else, is devoted). It is for example surprising that in a book of almost 400 pages there is no mention made of Guy Debord. But that defines the approach taken; an attention to the details of historical sequence and personalities, with little time left for discussion of ideas and the winged flight of the imagination, and its refusal to land, unless life itself changes. Call it romantic, idealist, naive, surreal, whatever; the spirit of 1968 would admit to all of those and much more. But this refusal to conform and to be categorized is still the only thing which has endured, and will continue to endure, from that annus mirabilis, long after the history and the politics have faded from memory, or been romanticized and consumer-packaged out of all recognition, which amounts to much the same thing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book about a Turbulent Year
Comment: Though I wouldn't be born for years after the tragic night they killed Bobby Kennedy, I remember it well. My father was there. Nineteen Sixty-Eight was a watershed year for him as it was for Amercia and the world. Not only did Bobby lose his life that year, but Martin did too. It was also the year of the siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, that war America wanted to forget even while it was still going on. It was a year of riots in both the aftermath of Mr. King's assassination and in Chicago at the Democratic Convention. Mr. Dubcek rose and fell in Czechoslovakia, Mr. Nixon became president, we saw TV from space and U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists in protest during the medals ceremony at the Olympic games in Mexico City.
All of this and more I'd been raised with, had learned at my father's knee when I was a child, reminded of again at his side when I was a girl and later when I was a young woman. These events shaped him, made him into a wonderful liberal, always willing to give the shirt off his back to help a stranger in need. But my dad's gone now and I haven't thought about 1968 in years, not until I saw this wonderful book in my local bookstore.
Mr. Kurlansky has delivered a book that brought back my dad, a book for all of us who were born so long after the fact and a book, I believe, that is must reading even for all of those who lived during that turbulent year that rocked the world. It's a year worth remembering, worth learning about, worth knowing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ok but one glaring unforgivable omission
Comment: A bit of a missed opportunity.
An interesting idea for a book though surely it should have been a much more weighty and lengthier tome. It is engaging in sections certainly but more often than not the writing style is dry and dreary.At times Kurlansky manages to make one of the most seismic,life-changing and dynamic periods in recent world history as dull as a Rafa Benitez post-football match interview.
Also as one previous reviewer has already pointed out how could the author have omitted any real comment on, or ,at the very least, a brief analysis of the events unfolding and coming to a head in northern Ireland in this incendiary year?
To quote from one of the quotes found in the preface - Silence is (indeed) sometimes a disgrace.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What about Northern Ireland?
Comment: Kurlansky's narrative of 1968 is an energytic page-turner which I couldn't put down. Hugely enjoyable. One thing I don't understand is why, while he was telling us of protests and attempted-revolutions all around the world, he only gave Northern Ireland one cursory mention. Nationalist civil rights activists were being beaten, shot and tear-gassed by the police and racist mobs. It led to an IRA campaign which lasted thirty years. Worth a chapter one would think.
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Summary: A fantastic and informative read
Comment: This book totally gripped me in my lust for knowledge for a period I knew far too little about. It has shown me, excatly as it says on the cover, how we got to where we are today. I thoroughly recomend this book to anyone who wants to find out more about the not so distant past and is ready to realise how much and quickly the world has changed since 1968.
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