1968: Marching in the Streets - Hardcover

Ali, Tariq; Watkins, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684853604 ISBN 13: 9780684853604

Publisher: Free Press, 1998

Synopsis

Featuring more than 150 black-and-white photographs, a commemoration of the turbulent year of 1968 brings vividly to life the events that convulsed the world, from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the end of the Prague Spring. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684853604
• ISBN 13: 9780684853604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224