Quite a Year

Of course 1968 was, as the subtitle puts it, "The Year that Rocked the World"--that was the year my husband and I were born. Turns out that's not the only earth-shaking thing that happened that year.

In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were shot. 14,954 U.S. citizens were killed in action in Vietnam. Many more Ibo and other minorities died of starvation in the Biafra/Nigeria civil war. (And if you want to read a wonderful, sad novel about that, read Half of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.) Soviet tanks invaded Prague, ending some of Czechoslovakia's early democratic reforms. Protests broke out all over the world. Fidel Castro was becoming a hero to American New Left. And American anti-war demonstrators, wounded by police, sought refuge in the lobby of the Conrad Hilton hotel in Chicago during riots at the Democratic national convention.

Mark Kurlansky's book, 1968, recounts the seismic shifts that were occuring throughout that year. This is not my usual reading material! I listened to the audiobook version, which is likely the only way I would ever finish it. Even so, the sheer number of names and places reminded me of my less favorite high school history classes (not you, Mrs. McBride!), when dates and places would numb my mind, and I'd resort to painting pictures with Wite-Out in an effort to stay awake.

However, here my interest was held enough that I actually learned some things. It helped that the narrator was a British man with fun pronunciations, such as saying "massages" for "messages." And there were several times that Kurlansky quoted from others and caught me up short, such as Robert F. Kennedy's suggestion that a growing economy is not always the answer. "Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Also, this quote from Albert Camus: "Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery."

1968, according to the author, was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau ushered in the era of leaders chosen for style over substance.

It was the year that the image of the heroic war was tarnished, and America saw the brutal reality of Vietnam, courtesy of live television footage. Interestingly, this led to a sharp change in the way war movies were made--audiences were no longer to be fooled by bloodless warfare. Audiences demanded more realism, which led to the alteration of the level of violence allowed in movies.

As I listened to Kurlansky's words about the young protestors, it fascinated me that the Baby Boomers, a generation that fought so many different fights for rights and idealism, eventually spawned what is now being called Generation Me for its purported narcissism. How did one generation go from working so hard for world change to rearing children who are famous for self-absorption?

This book will give readers a good basis for understanding what occured in the 60s and beyond. Unfortunately for Brian and me, it is apparent from this book that our births did not rock the world. But isn't it pretty to think so?