1968 by Mark Kurlansky (2003)

1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky (2003)

We live in tumultuous days, and sometimes (like during those “mostly peaceful” protests of 2020), you might think: “Our nation will never recover from this!” But the truth is, no matter how bad things seem, we’ve been here before, and we’ve survived.

Donald Trump’s two presidencies—and the illogically hateful reaction to them—have stirred our nation into a turbulence of division and violence that we haven’t seen in many decades. Our “Melting Pot” is roiling, and it’s about to boil over, despite the incredible successes that Trump has achieved at the border, in the private sector, and globally.

“He’s mean,” some say—and therefore (apparently, to some Progressives) he must DIE! Again, such hatred is illogical. Whether you like term or not, TDS is real and it turns every Trump success (heck, every turn of the head!) into an abject failure, and many believe the lies they’re fed. Smartphones control the thinking of far too many. A.I. chats, influencers, and podcasters are (for some) the arbiters of truth, while a person’s own eyeballs and brain have gone on sabbatical.

But again, there’s this comfort: even though the technology is new, the lies and vitriol are not. We’ve been here before, and we’ve survived.

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Brief Summary of 1968

The above is why I’ve been wanting to read Mark Kurlansky’s 1968: The Year That Rocked the World for so long—and why I’m glad it made it to our Siblings’ Book Club this year. Like our recent history, 1968 was a year of protests, war, assassinations, racism, riots, police brutality, and drugs. It was a year of cultural clashes at home and abroad and the rise of Communism globally—as well as revolts in the face of it. Truly, not just America but the whole world was in turmoil.

This book moves both chronologically and thematically through 1968, and within those confines, also geographically. I had anticipated it being mostly focused on the USA, where such things as the Kennedy and King assassinations shocked the nation, or reports of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam made everyone question the War. But Kurlansky’s focus is far more global than just the US—with great emphasis, for example, on Czechoslovakia and the Soviets or South American revolutions.

Other Books from the Era

For fun, I did a quick search through my site of books from this era. I discovered some common themes from the late-’60s that now aren’t too surprising! Here’s a snippet of five:

1968 – Young Man in Vietnam by Charles Coe — a marvelously personal “memoir” of the Vietnam War.
1968 – Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer — a challenge for believers to both understand and engage false secular philosophies.
1969 – Marching Orders for the End Battle by Corrie ten Boom — a circumspect view of the times that drove this Holocaust survivor to believe she was living in the End Times.
1970 – 666 by Salem Kirban — an early attempt at Left Behind-style fiction, supposing that the day’s headlines meant people were already living in the End Times.
1970 – Tortured for His Faith by Richard Wurmbrand — Real-life religious persecution from inside the Soviet Bloc.

Major Threads in the Book

While 1968 covers incredible swaths of ground, I have decided to focus this review on just a few main threads that I found interesting in the book, particularly because they’re so reminiscent of today. These threads are: rebellion, media, and triggers.

The Whole World Connected by Rebellion

In his introduction, Kurlansky paints the landscape for us: contention across the globe, nation to nation and even age group to age group. He writes:

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. (5)

He also names four factors that collided at just the right moment in history to create the turmoil of 1968. He names these as the U.S. Civil Rights movement, a generational gap that alienated the youth from all authority, the globally despised Vietnam War, and the advent of Live TV in its uncensored beginnings (6).

New Media from New Technology

It was the uncensored aspect of Live TV that brought the greatest changes. For the first time, people could not only see what was happening across the nation and world but also see the devastation or war in real time and hear politicians and rebels in their own unscripted words. Kurlansky notes this about the rise of such new technology:

There was something else that was different about this generation. They were the first to grow up with television, and they did not have to learn how to use it, it came naturally, the same way children who grew up with computers in the 1990s had an instinct for it that older people could not match with education. (126)

Key to this transition into Live TV was the most-respected of personalities, Walter Cronkite—the voice of truth, not the arbiter of it. When he suddenly found himself expositing the news not just delivering it, he knew a line had been crossed:

Cronkite suspected that all the trust he had earned was about to be diminished because he was crossing a line he had never before crossed. CBS also feared that their news show’s top ratings might slip with Walter’s transition from sphinx to pundit. But the more they thought about it, the more it seemed to Cronkite and Salant that in this moment of confusion, the public was hungering for a clear voice explaining what was happening and what should be happening. (78)

Kurlansky notes this about the media early on:

I am convinced that fairness is possible but true objectivity is not. The objective American press of 1968 was far more subjective than it realized. (8)

A New Era, But the Same Ol’ Triggers

Although Live-broadcast TV was a means of education to the younger generation about the goings on of the world, something deeper, something internal sourced the rebellion that spread across the globe—fury. And it’s a fury we can still see today, whenever we turn on X and watch the “protests” in Portland or Minneapolis. Kurlansky writes about this fury:

The young people of the generation, the ones who were in college in 1968, were the draftees. The Haydens and Savios, and Abbie Hoffmans, too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam, had not faced a draft. These younger members of the sixties generation, the people of 1968, had a fury in them that had not been seen before. (126)

Triggers for this fury included such things as race—something that came out in the apparent rise of “Zionism” and calling people “Nazis” (sound familiar?)—and protests. I’ll mention each briefly.

Race

The Civil Rights Movement did much to begin healing America’s racial divide, though racism remained alive and well. This was noted in the Port Huron Statement this way:

“Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” And that was exactly what was happening in the militant movements of the Left as well. Mirroring society, black and white activists were increasingly separated. (120)

Whereas the 1960s had the Black Panthers, our modern society has BLM. Critical Race Theory has led to White Guilt, so the BLM crowds are more diverse than they were in the 1960s, yet the rage is the same—though the roots of that rage are arguably different. I think History will prove just how vastly different they really are.

“Zionism”

Shocking to me was the constant references to “Zionism” in this book. I know it’s not a new idea—to think that evil Jews are taking over the world—but I didn’t know that was also an element of the turbulent 1960s. Yet another reminder of the hate-filled goings on of today. Kurlansky reports:

On March 15, an article appeared in the Trybuna Ludu explaining what Zionism was. It is a fact commonly known that money collection among the Americans of Jewish descent brought hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel. These funds enable Israel to develop its economic potential and its army, to wage aggressive wars against the Arab states [the latest was the third war with the Arabs] and also serve to cover expenses connected with the occupation of the Arab lands. . . . The Zionist leaders are calling for aid to finance the Israeli expansionist policy supported by the imperialist powers, specifically the USA and West Germany. With the help of Israel, Imperialism desires to abolish progressive Arab governments, strengthen its control over Arab petroleum and transform the Middle East into a springboard against the Soviet Union and other socialist states. In justification of the aggressive policy of Israeli ruling circles and pandering to Imperialism, the Zionist propaganda attempts to make world public opinion believe that Israel struggles for its existence and that it is threatened by the Arabs who wish to “drive Israel to the sea”. . . . But increasingly the word Zionist was becoming code for “student organizer.” (151)

Poland’s Gomułka, on the other hand, declared Czechoslovakia a counterrevolutionary state, outside the Warsaw bloc, that was plotting to overthrow Poland. And of course it was only a matter of days before the Poles and East Germans discovered that the “Zionists” were behind the counterrevolutionary plotting in Czechoslovakia. (354)

“Nazis”

Just as surprising, I learned that it was also common in 1968 to refer to those you hated as “Nazis.” Again, what a mirror-image to what we hear on the mainstream media day-in and day-out about Trump, his Cabinet, and ICE.

In 1968 there was hardly a demonstration from Warsaw to Berlin to Paris to Chicago to Mexico City that did not compare police to the Nazi storm troopers. In Warsaw, these plainclothes shock troops who arrived by truck, the ones the students called Gestapo, were often workers’ militia, who were told that the student protesters were privileged kids who lived in the best apartments and took trips to Paris, all of which was by and large true. Although there were plentiful reports of workers refusing to get in trucks and declining participation in counterdemonstrations, pitting the workers against the students was a successful government strategy. (146)

“Non-violent Protests”

Finally, the constant discussion of sometimes-peaceful, non-violent protests was too hard to ignore. Whether it’s the anti-War demonstrators (who had a point) or the Yipees (who seem like the perfect step-parents of Antifa), protestors abounded in the 1960s, and they most certainly had an agenda. I love how Kurlansky describes their methods:

The protesters can be nonviolent, but they must evoke a violent reaction. If both sides are nonviolent, there is no story. Martin Luther King used to complain about this, but after he met a man named Laurie Pritchett, he understood that it was a reality. (52)

I would love to expound on the Rene Goode and Alex Pretti cases, but I fear doing so will get me too fired up. Suffice it to say, they didn’t have to die. You can take that however you like.

Conclusion

When I get to thinking about political and media lies, my blood starts to boil a little bit. I simply need to pause and breathe: We’ve been here before, and we’ve survived. And I just need to pray: Thine be the glory, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

If I didn’t respond with patience and prayer, I’d be no better off than those who feed on headlines and let it ruin their days, years, and lives. This book has been sitting on my shelf for years, and it wasn’t supposed to make me angry. A discerning reader will take it as an education, ponder on the lessons, and move on. I hope I’m still a thoughtful, discerning reader.

This book was filled with language and drugs and violence and sex—but so were the 1960s! Some portions are genuinely hard to read, but overall, I found this an incredibly thought-provoking and informative book. I recommend it, but honestly, I think I need to take this moment to recommend the Bible first—and then a political history like this. We won’t move forward together until we can start agreeing on and learning from our past, and the Bible is a much better place to start.

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