Customer Reviews

The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America

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This book is a must-read for anyone who lived through these fabled and troubled times and is willing to endure Witcover's often emotional and always gripping recreation of the events of that fateful year. For those of us who were involved and are nostalgic about the people, hopes, and aspirations we remember from those times, it is difficult to resist peeking between the covers of any book written by Jules Witcover, a well-noted journalist and author who was on-the-scene as a national correspondent as the cataclysmic events of the sixties in general (and 1968 in particular) transpired. Although it was sometimes personally painful to re-experience by way of Witcover's Technicolor prose style about events that I either participated in or was acutely associated with, it is also humbling and encouraging to discover the degree to which he has accomplished this effort with such terrific accuracy, verve, and perspective.

Too often today one reads neo-conservative revisionist accounts of the sixties written by bow-tied authors who were likely so busy squeezing prepubescent pimples in the boys' room mirror of their local junior high schools in 1968 to really have understood what was going on or what it meant. Thus, they write essays simple-mindedly equating 50s style bohemianism with the beliefs, lifestyles, and perspectives of the counterculture, or promulgate the erroneous notion that the sixties youth revolution was a simple coda of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, or that it's the aftermath of the so-called "new-left" cult of permissiveness that is primarily responsible for the breakdown in contemporary American culture. Such silly, superficial & self-serving analysts of the sixties social scene would do well to immerse themselves in tomes such as this to gain a better sense of the times before launching into ignorant and self-serving diatribes.

The sixties defy such easy, unsophisticated, and facile explanations, and it is difficult to now faithfully recollect the various individual elements of those fractious times without a quite careful, deliberate, & objective search. Many of the conditions for better understanding are present in this book. Witcover describes the month-by-month progress of the year with excruciating detail and a unique sense for how to mix various seemingly unrelated events and characteristics of a particular moment to engender the faithful recall of its tone and flavor. He slowly & carefully recreates the stage for our understanding of how the social, economic, and political sensitivities of millions of Americans with different perspectives & beliefs collided into cultural conflict, and how the collective hopes & dreams of many Americans for a better nation were nearly destroyed beneath a flood of violence, deception and trauma associated with the events of the year.

1968 was a year of great pitch and moment for this country, a moment in time when the social fabric of the country was nearly torn apart, and it was indeed a tragic year in the sense that so much of what started out as positive, hopeful, and energetic ended as being negative, discouraging, and dissolving. It was, as Charles Dickens observed about a different revolutionary period, "the best of times and the worst of times", it was a time when, for even the briefest of moments, the social, economic and human possibilities of this country hung in the balance, when a certain indescribable electricity hung in the air, and when we thought we might just be able to turn this troubled and troubling world around. Then it crashed back to earth. Jules Witcover describes this year of such hope and despair as well as I have read to date. Read it and enjoy!

"The Year the Dream Died" is probably the best and most comprehensive account yet of the 1968 presidential election. Nineteen sixty-eight was a strange and terrible year in American history, a year in which we endured the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, an escalating war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, the quixotic campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace, chaos at the Chicago Democratic convention, and finally Richard Nixon's rise to the presidency.

Witcover is a veteran political reporter, and this book focuses heavily on U.S. politics rather than on the events of the world at large. There's a lot of day-to-day detail on what the candidates did and said, and it sometimes becomes tedious. On the other hand, Witcover pays relatively little attention to other interesting developments around the world, such as the progress of the war in Vietnam, the Prague Spring, the student rebellion in Paris, and popular culture. It was a great and important year for popular music, yet the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones get only a very brief mention. Rather than the grand "Revisiting 1968 in America," the book's subtitle should have been something specific to politics, like "Revisiting the 1968 Presidential Election."

Although Witcover provides a generally balanced portrait of each of the men at the center of national politics in 1968, Bobby Kennedy is clearly his favorite, and like so many other commentators, he can't resist speculating about how much better the world might have been if Kennedy had survived and been elected president. On the other hand, McCarthy comes across as an otherworldly pied piper who somehow managed to captivate the nation's youth and a handful of its intellectuals, despite having little interest in campaigning, or indeed in the presidency itself. Humphrey is a bland and ineffectual figure caught in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson, regularly failing to seize opportunities to score political points but somehow coming from far behind Nixon to lose the election by only a small margin. Witcover gives Nixon credit mostly for clever image-making and keeping a lid on his darker side, without really exploring Nixon's broad appeal to the American people.

In the last chapter of the book, Witcover offers a kind of post-mortem on the 1968 election, quoting from interviews with participants across the political spectrum from Tom Hayden to Patrick Buchanan, and from commentators like Arthur Schlesinger, William Bennett, Richard Goodwin and Taylor Branch. It's the best chapter in the book, and should be required reading for any serious student of the 1960's. Its key point is that the 1968 election represented a conservative backlash against the various forces of dissent and disorder that had begun to flourish in America, the beginning of the conservative ascendancy that dominates American politics to this day.

You've no doubt heard of that phrase, "Born under a bad sign". Well, how about born in a bad year? That's the circumstances underlying your humble reviewer, but it didn't take Jules Witcover's 1968-The Year The Dream Died, to make me figure that my year was a rotten vintage.

Witcover points to the Kennedy assassination in 1963 as the point where things began to sour. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, future Senator of New York, then assistant secretary of Labour said in the wake of JFK's death, "We'll laugh again. It's just that we'll never be young again."

That whole disaster of a year that was the third straight year of U.S. involvement in Vietnam was also a presidential election year, during which Democratic disunity and third party candidate George Wallace gave Richard Nixon a new address--1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It also didn't help matters for Hubert Humphrey that his hands were tied in his election bid. He couldn't actively criticize LBJ, who was concentrating on conducting the war.

But the two events that spelled the death of optimism were the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The latter's death is covered in a chapter aptly titled "Murder of Hope." It figured. The nation still hadn't completely healed after the JFK assassination and the murder of these two figures served to scar the nation even more.

Nixon, Agnew, Johnson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Lt. William Calley were some of the dark forces at work that year, but the most ridiculous by far was General Curtis LeMay, that lunatic who seriously thought of using nukes in Vietnam and embarassed George Wallace, who tapped him to be his running mate without foresight.

My Lai demonstrated how brutally insane the situation in Vietnam had become. How could American soldiers actually contemplate massacring 567 unarmed civilians, when in World War II, they were considered heroes?

Other events covered: the riots in Chicago, the Pueblo incident in North Korea, the Prague Spring, the presidential campaign, and the student protests that inflamed universities.

Each chapter represents a month of that dreadful year, and at the beginning of each chapter is a brief timeline of what else occurred, be they deaths of famous people, e.g. Helen Keller, or opening days of key films e.g. Yellow Submarine.

However, at the end, Witcover argues alternative scenarios. Had RFK lived, he would have taken the Democratic nomination AND the White House, ended Vietnam, and worked with MLK to heal the racial divide in the country. Or if Eugene McCarthy had decided to endorse Hubert Humphrey earlier in the race, Humphrey would have defeated Nixon. All of this and more is soberingly reviewed in a thorough coverage of that fateful year.

I will keep this very brief because there are so many avenues to examine this book and I offer only one.

The reason to read this masterwork is because Witcover posits that 1968 might have been the year of the counter-revolution rather than the great liberal near miss that others, like Jack Newfield, have contended.

After all of the RFK myth-making and all of the old liberal romancing about a dream stolen from us that year (full disclosure: I am a liberal) is dispensed with one thing remains, how can we explain why a 61.1% victory for LBJ in 64' turned into 42% for Hubert Humphrey in 1968? Something was amiss on the political left in 1968 and it wasn't RFK and MLK's murders alone but a deeper shift in the public's view of the Democrats and what they could offer a nation in transition. Look no further than now: 37 years of conservative politics and still counting! If 68' was the year that should have been then where have the Democrats been for all those years? Where are the dynamic news ideas??? Where is the liberal legacy? While Reagan may have been a "great communicator," nothing made Nixon and both Bushes so downright appealing (except, perhaps, their alternatives?)! The fact is, the Democrats lost their voice and their way that year because their best spokesmen either died or discovered their ideas just did not fit into an America sick of riots and protests. When will the Democrats awaken from the timidity they've adopted since?

I recommend this book for the varied perspectives Witcover brings together to discuss how so pivotal a year has shaped our politcs to this day. There is no romance or myth-making here, just hard questions asked and hard answers considered.

Five stars.

"The Year the Dream Died" is probably the best and most comprehensive account yet of the 1968 presidential election. Nineteen sixty-eight was a strange and terrible year in American history, a year in which we endured the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, an escalating war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, the quixotic campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace, chaos at the Chicago Democratic convention, and finally Richard Nixon's rise to the presidency.

Witcover is a veteran political reporter, and this book focuses heavily on U.S. politics rather than on the events of the world at large. There's a lot of day-to-day detail on what the candidates did and said, and it sometimes becomes tedious. On the other hand, Witcover pays relatively little attention to other interesting developments around the world, such as the progress of the war in Vietnam, the Prague Spring, the student rebellion in Paris, and popular culture. It was a great and important year for popular music, yet the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones get only a very brief mention. Rather than the grand "Revisiting 1968 in America," the book's subtitle should have been something specific to politics, like "Revisiting the 1968 Presidential Election."

Although Witcover provides a generally balanced portrait of each of the men at the center of national politics in 1968, Bobby Kennedy is clearly his favorite, and like so many other commentators, he can't resist speculating about how much better the world might have been if Kennedy had survived and been elected president. On the other hand, McCarthy comes across as an otherworldly pied piper who somehow managed to captivate the nation's youth and a handful of its intellectuals, despite having little interest in campaigning, or indeed in the presidency itself. Humphrey is a bland and ineffectual figure caught in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson, regularly failing to seize opportunities to score political points but somehow coming from far behind Nixon to lose the election by only a small margin. Witcover gives Nixon credit mostly for clever image-making and keeping a lid on his darker side, without really exploring Nixon's broad appeal to the American people.

In the last chapter of the book, Witcover offers a kind of post-mortem on the 1968 election, quoting from interviews with participants across the political spectrum from Tom Hayden to Patrick Buchanan, and from commentators like Arthur Schlesinger, William Bennett, Richard Goodwin and Taylor Branch. It's the best chapter in the book, and should be required reading for any serious student of the 1960's. Its key point is that the 1968 election represented a conservative backlash against the various forces of dissent and disorder that had begun to flourish in America, the beginning of the conservative ascendancy that dominates American politics to this day.

Witcover's history of 1968 is terrific.He recounts the year in a straightforward manner and without nostalgia.The title is a little misleading,as it implies that all events of 1968 are covered equally,when probably 80% of the text is on the presidential election.In this way the book is more like one of Witcover's and Germond's post election books than,say David Halberstam's 'The 50's'.

The book's strengths are Witcover's superb reporting and excellent writing style.The only digression from objectivity is Witcover's deep rooted personal bias against Richard Nixon.(I'm guessing these views must have a personal history,and are not based in ideology,as other Republicans are treated fairly)

All in all,this is a great book,and readers of recent U.S. history should enjoy it.It praises those who deseve praise and blasts those who deserve to be critcized-regardless on what side they were on during the turmoil of 1968.All of this while maintainig a very readable tone.

Highly recommened

Witcover focuses on the 1968 presidential campaign and in so doing reveals a great deal about American society. This is not a book that goes into American politics with any depth, but it is well-written so that the events he covers come alive. Witcover moves month-by-month through an incredible year selecting key details that hold the reader's attention. Kennedy and McCarthy are the primary focal points in his text for the spring, while Nixon and Humphrey emerge as the focus of the rest of the book, but all the other characters are also there: Nixon, Agnew, Romney, Rockefeller, Reagan and - of course - LBJ. The book climaxes (as does the year) with the Democratic National convention and police riot in Chicago. The details in this section move you from laughter to tears within a few pages - there is that kind of power to Witcover's writing. A weakness in the book is that Martin Luther King, the civil rights, poor people's, and Black power movements are not covered in sufficient depth to be anything other than props for the "real" story. If you are not looking for deep scholarship on American politics and social movements you will find this book enjoyable reading and you will have a hard time putting it down.

I lived 68. I read every word. Brought me back and now I really miss those days. It was the best of times and the worst of times. Let's live 68 in 08.

"The Year the Dream Died" captured the upheaval, controversy and pain of 1968. As someone who does not typically grativate to non-fiction, I picked this book up somewhat reluctantly. Witcover, as a good reporter and talented writer, drew me in to his organized, in many cases first hand, recollection of that year. While the American political scene is really the center of the book, issues such as Vietnam and civil rights did much to shape American history that year. A good read for anyone who lives history and drama!

Witcover hits the nail on the head. If you did not experience the 60's you get a strong feel for how the decade's most tumultous year unfolded. Highly suggested for anyone who cares about politics or history.