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No One Was Killed: The Democratic National Convention, August 1968 Paperback – Illustrated, April 15, 2009
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While other writers contemplated the events of the 1968 Chicago riots from the safety of their hotel rooms, John Schultz was in the city streets, being threatened by police, choking on tear gas, and listening to all the rage, fear, and confusion around him. The result, No One Was Killed, is his account of the contradictions and chaos of convention week, the adrenalin, the sense of drama and history, and how the mainstream press was getting it all wrong.
"A more valuable factual record of events than the city’s white paper, the Walker Report, and Theodore B. White’s Making of a President combined."—Book Week
"As a reporter making distinctions between Yippie, hippie, New Leftist, McCarthyite, police, and National Guard, Schultz is perceptive; he excels in describing such diverse personalities as Julian Bond and Eugene McCarthy."—Library Journal
"High on my short list of true, lasting, inspired evocations of those whacked-out days when the country was fighting a phantasmagorical war (with real corpses), and police under orders were beating up demonstrators who looked at them funny."—Todd Gitlin, from the foreword
- Print length328 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
- Publication dateApril 15, 2009
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100226740781
- ISBN-13978-0226740782
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A more valuable factual record of events than the city's white paper, the Walker Report and Theodore B. White's Making of the President combined." -- Christopher Chandler ― Book Week
“It was a young Chicago novelist and writer for the radical-left press, John Schultz, reporting for the Evergreen Review, who produced the best book on the riots, No One Was Killed. Schultz . . . captures both the subtle ruptures of mutual contempt between the Yippies and the New Left and the moral indefensibility of the police.”
-- Christian Lorentzen ― Bookforum
“A rich primary source of an event that defined the course of American social, political, and urban history in the late twentieth century.” -- Christopher Ramsey ― Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society Published On: 2010-03-31
"Of all the book-length accounts I read of 1960's political and cultural confrontations, none (not even Mailer's Armies of the Night) is more lucid in its understanding of the torments and tropisms of the movements of the streets. . . . This is vivid writing that can stand as pure, suspenseful reportage." -- Todd Gitlin
"This book is a gritty, first-person account of the events of Sunday through Friday of Dem Con '68. Though Schultz supports Senator Eugene McCarthy-running on an anti-war platform-for the Democratic nomination, Schultz's sympathies unite him with the protestors in Lincoln and Grant Parks. He takes cracks on the head and tear gas to the eyes and throat to capture sights unique to demonstrators...While No One Was Killed covers some of the blow-by-blow political maneuvering within the convention...Schultz, advance guard of the put-himself-there new journalism, realizes sides must be taken and lines drawn." -- Jon Gugala ― Chicago Life Magazine
About the Author
John Schultz (1932-2017) was professor emeritus of fiction writing and a member of the graduate faculty in fiction writing at Columbia College in Chicago. He wrote novellas, short stories, and several books of non-fiction. He was the creator of the Story Workshop method of writing instruction which he practiced at Columbia, and the founder of Story Workshop Institute, which brought the same methods to elementary and secondary classrooms.
Schultz covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention for the Evergreen Review and wrote No One Was Killed, an account of both the convention and the clashes between antiwar protesters and Chicago police. He also observed the subsequent trial of eight participants for conspiracy and inciting riot, which he recounted in Motion Will Be Denied, republished as The Conspiracy Trial of the Chicago Seven. Both books are published by the University of Chicago Press.
Product details
- Publisher : University of Chicago Press
- Publication date : April 15, 2009
- Edition : Reissue
- Language : English
- Print length : 328 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0226740781
- ISBN-13 : 978-0226740782
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,753,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,120 in Elections
- #9,873 in Asian History (Books)
- #42,439 in U.S. State & Local History
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseGripping and lucid. The only book I can compare with this is John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World. I thought I knew everything about those days and found out I knew little. Why isn't this book well-known?????
- Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2011Format: PaperbackThe events in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention vividly displayed the social divisions and conflicts of the Sixties. Thus it's an event that can serve as an entryway into understanding the period.
No one book can do justice to Chicago '68, but this one comes the closest. John Schultz takes you inside the International Amphitheatre where the convention was taking place as well as into the parks and onto the streets where the protests were. He captures the nightly confrontations at curfew time in Lincoln Park with cinematic clarity. Schultz's narrative sticks close to the street action, close to the acts of demonstrators, rather than the activities of the soon-to-be-famous so-called leaders. Read this to sense the full-bodied flavor of Convention Week 1968.
Lots of books on the Sixties are steeped in nostalgia and never cut through the foggy mists of time. This one is the original article, it will show you what it was to be there.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2016Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI was really looking forward to this book but I've only been able to get 25 pages in before wanting to barf at the terrible writing style of the author. it's turgid to say the least. this is a guy who never met an adjective that didn't need to be surrounded by a ton of other adjectives. his paragraphs are way too thick and he has no sense of when to let things breath. every single moment is filled with his blathering on about Pigs and what Pigs are and aren't, etc etc etc. Jesus, I don't know if I can read another word.
photos are okay, though.



