1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky
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Book Reviews of 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
Book Review: 1 star: The Review That Rocked this Book
Summary: 1 Stars
If we are to draw equivalent lessons from both the Prague Spring and street protests in the U.S., as Kurlansky attempts in this book, the connection should depend on more than that they simply occured in the same year. The reader is owed specifics, yet is rewarded with little more than vague platitudes. Prague was a protest against a government which not only lacked representation and dissent, but prohibited it. Chicago et al were protests against decisions made by a representative government, however flawed, resulting from open debate. A bigger difference could hardly be imagined. But Kurlansky does see striking differences, albeit only in the post-1968 world. The Soviet bloc began it's decent to oblivion, while the capitalist West avoided the same. His disappointment in the latter is not hard to glean, though what manner of "revolution" he envisions is never rendered to specifics, likely for good reason. But who needs details when false equivalencies and empty platitudes will do?Book Review: Cynical, sly and revisionist
Summary: 1 Stars
This guy is really "stuck in the '60's", or rather what he thought the sixties were like when he was a naive youth. Many people tend to idealize their younger days, but to pass their fantasies off as history is a disgraceful act. It is also blatantly false and misleading. This author sounds and smells (at least intellectually if not actually) like some of the guys with grey, greasy ponytails that caused me to leave The Jersey Boys early in disgust last year. I lived through the sixties too, and it's time we all got over it.