# Read the first page of 1968 by Mark Kurlansky Read the opening of 1968 by Mark Kurlansky free, no signup. The political and cultural upheavals that made 1968 a global turning point. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/1968-mark-kurlansky - Genre: Social history - Year: 2003 - ISBN: 9781407020709 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781407020709&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781407020709 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781407020709 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ INTRODUCTION @@CHAP@@ THE YEAR THAT ROCKED THE WORLD One of the pleasures of middle age is to find out that one was right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say 17 or 23. —EZRA POUND, ABC of Reading, 1934 THERE HAS NEVER been a year like 1968, and it is unlikely that there will ever be one again. At a time when nations and cultures were still separate and very different—and in 1968 Poland, France, the United States, and Mexico were far more different from one another than they are today—there occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world. There had been other years of revolution. 1848 had been such a year, but in contrast to 1968 its events were confined to Europe, its rebellions confined to similar issues. There had been other global events, the result of global empire building. And there was that huge, tragic global event, World War II. What was unique about 1968 was that people were rebelling over disparate issues and had in common only that desire to rebel, ideas about how to do it, a sense of alienation from the established order, and a profound distaste for authoritarianism in any form. Where there was communism they rebelled against communism, where there was capitalism they turned against that. The rebels rejected most institutions, political leaders, and political parties. It was not planned and it was not organized. Rebellions were directed through hastily called meetings; some of the most important decisions were made on a moment’s whim. The movements were antiauthoritarian and so were leaderless or had leaders who denied being leaders. Ideologies were seldom clear, and there was widespread agreement on very few issues. In 1969, when a federal grand jury indicted eight activists in connection with the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968, Abbie Hoffman, one of the eight, said about the group, “We couldn’t agree on lunch.” And though rebellion was everywhere, rarely did these forces come together, or when they did, as with the civil rights, antiwar, and feminist movements in the United States, or the labor and student movements in France and Italy, it was an alliance of temporary convenience, quickly dissolved. Four historic factors merged to create 1968: the example of the civil rights movement, which at the time was so new and original; a generation that felt so different and so alienated that it rejected all forms of authority; a war that was hated so universally around the world that it provided a cause for all the rebels seeking one; and all of this occurring at the moment that television was coming of age but was still new enough not to have yet become controlled, distilled, and packaged the way it is today. In 1968 the phenomenon of a same-day broadcast from another part of the world was in itself a gripping new technological wonder. The American war in Vietnam was not unique and certainly no more reprehensible than numerous other wars, including the earlier French war in Vietnam. But this time it was being pursued by a nation with unprecedented global power. At a time when colonies were struggling to re-create themselves as nations, when the “anticolonial struggle” had touched the idealism of people all over the world, here was a weak and fragile land struggling for independence while this new type of entity known as a “superpower” dropped more non-nuclear bombs on its small territory than had been dropped on all of Asia and Europe in World War II. At the height of 1968 fighting, the U.S. military was killing every week the same number of people or more as died in the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack. While within the movements in the United States, France, Germany, and Mexico there was tremendous splintering and factionalism, everyone could agree—because of the power and prestige of the United States and the brutal and clearly unfair nature of the American war in Vietnam—that they opposed the Vietnam War. When the American civil rights movement became split in 1968 between the advocates of nonviolence and the advocates of Black Power, the two sides could come together in agreement on opposition to the Vietnam War. Dissident movements around the world could be built up simply by coming out against the war. ## Books with a similar feel - [At Home by Bill Bryson](https://uncovered.ink/read/at-home-bill-bryson.md) - [The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-origins-of-totalitarianism-hannah-arendt.md) - [Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman](https://uncovered.ink/read/social-intelligence-daniel-goleman.md) - [The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-man-in-the-high-castle-philip-k-dick.md) - [The Book of Esther by Emily Barton](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-book-of-esther-emily-barton.md) - [Know My Name by Chanel Miller](https://uncovered.ink/read/know-my-name-chanel-miller.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.