1968: Marching in the Streets [Hardcover]

Tariq Ali (Author), Susan Watkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 1998

Why is it that so many movements came into flower, so much conflict came to a head, so many landmark events both tragic and heroic all occurred in one milestone year? Students, socialites, workers, intellectuals, and artists participated in a political, cultural, and sexual revolution that challenged the established order around the world.

The events of 1968 left us scarred, enraged, enlightened -- and they left behind permanent changes we're still grappling with.

Thirty years later, Tariq Ali brings vividly to life the day-by-day, minute-by-minute events that took place throughout the world in this pivotal year: from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy to the Paris barricades and the brutal end of the Prague spring to the worldwide anti-war movements here is what really happened in the word and art of the people who were there.

With more than 150 photos and illustrations, 1968 is the commemorative for anyone who was there and those who weren't but want to know more about that fantastic year.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

1968: Marching in the Streets is a dynamic time line of the year that revolution swept the planet. With present tense prose, cartoons, and photographs, Tariq Ali (who was one of the founding editors of Black Dwarf, a London-based journal that pops up frequently in 1968) and Susan Watkins chronicle a year that saw everything from the assassinations of Che Guevara, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to KKK death threats against 70-year-old philosopher Herbert Marcuse. The Black Panthers, the street riots in Paris, the revolutionary spirit in Czechoslovakia ... all this and more is vividly recreated with a nonjudgmental voice that allows events to speak for themselves.

From Library Journal

These two intense works attempt to convey the importance of a remarkable year that now seems so distant. Ali (Street Fighting Years, Collins, 1988), a former radical leader, offers an idealistic and uncritical survey of the student uprisings that swept through the world in 1968. His month-by-month approach works well for his narrative descriptions but limits the identification of over-arching themes or root causes of the rebellions. His strongest and most compelling recountings describe Alexander Dubcek's failure to sustain the Prague Spring movement in Czechoslovakia, the devastation and death caused by American bombings of North Vietnam, and the near toppling of the French government by an alliance of students and workers. Unfortunately, Ali's depictions of the American student movement are sketchy. He incorrectly identifies Senator Eugene McCarthy as the winner of the Democratic New Hampshire primary, and he demonstrates not unexpected bias by referring to Richard Nixon as "shifty and ghoulish." An optional purchase, suitable for large collections adding works on international student movements. The photographers of the 50-year-old Magnum Photos agency have compiled a powerful visual rendering of 1968. Although accompanied by essays and a useful chronology, the stark, full-page black-and-white photos are what capture the brio and angst of the times. Pictures of antiwar rallies, hippies and communal living, the aftermath of the King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, and victims of My Lai and the Biafran War are blunt reminders that if Ali views the Sixties as the best of times, they were also among the worst. Strongly recommended for large libraries seeking a photographic remembrance of this tumultuous year.AKarl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (June 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684853604
• ISBN-13: 978-0684853604
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,328,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing look at an amazing year, March 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 1968: Marching in the Streets (Hardcover)

The authors say their book is simply a chronicle of 1968. But chronicles are rarely written with such deft dramatic irony, nor are they usually so ebullient or scattered with jokes. Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins have done something which is a challenge to any historian: they have made utopian rebellion intelligible. The international span makes this book a unique record: Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland as well as women's liberation and Paris, Prague and Vietnam. The utopian ideas of 1968---that knowledge should be accessible, work democratised and time claimed for living and loving, not just for making money--are even more relevant 30 years on.