Mark Kurlansky is the James A. Beard Award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; The Basque History of the World; A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry; A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny; a collection of stories, The White Man in the Tree; and a children’s book, The Cod’s Tale; as well as the editor of Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History. He lives in New York City.
“In this highly opinionated and highly readable history, Kurlansky
makes a case for why 1968 has lasting relevance in the United
States and around the world. Whether you agree or disagree with its
points, you’ll find it makes for fascinating reading.”
—DAN RATHER, CBS News
“Highly readable . . . a rich perspective . . . Kurlansky is a
writer of remarkable talents and interests.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Carefully researched and remarkably readable . . . Kurlansky has
done a yeoman’s job of amassing an incredible amount of information
and making it accessible for today’s reader. . . . What a year it
was.”
–The Denver Post
Splendid . . . evocative . . . No one before Kurlansky has managed
to evoke so rich a set of experiences in so many different
places–and to keep the story humming.”
–Chicago Tribune
Kurlansky writes with a historian’s diligence. . . . [He] traces
skillfully the astounding streams of revolt converging in that
historic year. . . . A colorful, highly evocative report on the
awfulness and the idealism of the time.”
–The Seattle Times
“A cornucopia of astounding events and audacious originality . . .
Like a reissue of a classic album or a PBS documentary, this book
is about a subject it’s hard to imagine people ever tiring of
revisiting. They just don’t make years like 1968 very often.”
–The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“1968 breathes a new life into these moments. . . . Kurlansky has a
flair for bringing wit and breezy intelligence to his
subjects.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Fascinating . . . [Kurlansky] re-creates events with flair and
drama.”
–Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
"In this highly opinionated and highly readable history, Kurlansky
makes a case for why 1968 has lasting relevance in the
United States and around the world. Whether you agree or disagree
with its points, you'll find it makes for fascinating reading."
-DAN RATHER, CBS News
"Highly readable . . . a rich perspective . . . Kurlansky is a
writer of remarkable talents and interests."
-San Francisco Chronicle
Carefully researched and remarkably readable . . . Kurlansky has
done a yeoman's job of amassing an incredible amount of information
and making it accessible for today's reader. . . . What a year it
was."
-The Denver Post
Splendid . . . evocative . . . No one before Kurlansky has managed
to evoke so rich a set of experiences in so many different
places-and to keep the story humming."
-Chicago Tribune
Kurlansky writes with a historian's diligence. . . . [He] traces
skillfully the astounding streams of revolt converging in that
historic year. . . . A colorful, highly evocative report on the
awfulness and the idealism of the time."
-The Seattle Times
"A cornucopia of astounding events and audacious originality . . .
Like a reissue of a classic album or a PBS documentary, this book
is about a subject it's hard to imagine people ever tiring of
revisiting. They just don't make years like 1968 very often."
-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"1968 breathes a new life into these moments. . . . Kurlansky has a
flair for bringing wit and breezy intelligence to his
subjects."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Fascinating . . . [Kurlansky] re-creates events with flair and
drama."
-Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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