Reviewed by Seth Clark Walker

It’s 1968. The symbol for the Summer Olympics in Mexico City is the dove, but there’s anything but peace in the world.

The U.S. civil rights struggle rages. Leading authors, doctors and chaplains encourage people to dodge the Vietnam draft. In Spain, Franco continues his brutal oppression. In the Middle East, a guerrilla fighter named Arafat gets a new opportunity to lead a liberation front. And that’s just in the first week of the year.

The book 1968 is a thoroughly researched if not highly subjective look at what Kurlansky believes to be one of the most turbulent years in world history. Written from a 'been there, done that' perspective – Kurlansky was 20 and an activist in 1968 – the book provides an insider’s view with 35 additional years of reflection on a time that “rocked” the world.

Kurlansky, author of the New York Times best-selling books Cod and Salt: A World History, calls ‘68 the epicenter of a fundamental change, the birth of a media-driven world, a unique time when groups of people around the world could not be silenced. He says it was the true rise of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village,” and its uniqueness was that populations from Czechoslovakia to Mexico to the U.S. could see each other for the first time on an emerging medium – live TV – and react.

The book is exhaustive in its research, and it can be exhausting at times. Broken-up into 20 page chapters to keep it moving, its protracted history still frequently bogs down in a literary style that’s more Ambrose than McPhee. The book is less a narrative tale and more of a history book spiced with anecdotes, just like Cod and Salt. Nevertheless, droll, unique anecdotes such as Bill Clinton being pegged as a “sixty eighter” in France during his presidency keep the reader turning the page.

Kurlansky’s book, while not a Revolution, one of the top songs of that tumultuous year, still deserves its place amongst insightful, modern history books that are laced with bits of good, narrative storytelling.