description: In this book, award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has written his most ambitious work to date: an ultimately definitive look at a pivotal moment in history. With 1968, he brings to life the cultural &amp; political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval. People think of it as the year of sex, drugs, &amp; rock &amp; roll. Yet it was also the year of the Martin Luther King Jr &amp; Bobby Kennedy assassinations; the Democratic National Convention in Chicago riots; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement &amp; the Tet Offensive; Black Power; the generation gap, avant-garde theater, the birth of the women's movement &amp; the beginning of the end for the USSR. From NYC, Miami, Berkeley &amp; Chicago to Paris, Prague, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Tokyo &amp; Mexico City, spontaneous uprisings occurred simultaneously around the globe. Everything was disrupted. In the Middle East, Yasir Arafat's guerilla organization rose to prominence...both the Cannes Film Festival &amp; the Venice Biennale were forced to shut down by protesters...the Kentucky Derby winner was stripped of the crown for drug use... the Olympics were a disaster, with the Mexican government having massacred 100s of students protesting police brutality there...&amp; the Miss America pageant was stormed by feminists carrying banners that introduced to the tv-watching public the phrase 'women's liberation'. Kurlansky shows how the coming of live tv made 1968 the 1st global year. It was the year that an amazed world watched the 1st live telecast from outer space &amp; that tv news expanded to half an hour. For the 1st time, Americans watched that day's battle: the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive on the evening news. Tv also shocked the world with 17 minutes of police clubbing demonstrators at the Chicago convention, live film of unarmed students facing Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia &amp; a war of starvation in Biafra. The impact was huge, not only on the antiwar movement, but also on the medium itself. The fact that one now needed tv to make things happen was a cultural revelation with enormous consequences. In many ways, this momentous year led us to where we are today. Whether thru youth &amp; music, politics &amp; war, economics &amp; the media, Kurlansky shows how, in 1968, 12 volatile months transformed who we are as a people. But above all, he gives a new understanding to the underlying causes of the unique historical phenomenon that was the 1968. Thoroughly researched &amp; engagingly written--full of telling anecdotes, penetrating analysis, &amp; the author's trademark incisive wit--1968 is the most important book yet of his career.
language: French
title: 1968: L'année qui ébranla le monde
titlecomplete: 1968: L'année qui ébranla le monde
genres: Historical, War, Politics, Music, Nonfiction, World History, American History, History, Sociology, Audiobook
ratings_count: 3028
publisher: Presses de la Cite