Author:Mark Kurlansky
‘A fascinating account…combining the rigour of the historian with the powerful emotions of someone who was a twenty-year-old student at the time’ Uncut
It was the year of sex and drugs and rock and roll. But what impact did it have on today’s political and social landscape?
It was also the year of the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, the Prague Spring, the Chicago convention, the Tet offensive in Vietnam and the anti-war movement, the student rebellion that paralysed France, civil rights, the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union, and the birth of the women's movement.
With 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, award-winning journalist Mark Kurlansky has written his magnum opus - a cultural and political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval, when television's impact on global events first became apparent, and when simultaneously – in Paris, Prague, London, Berkeley, and all over the globe – uprisings spontaneously occurred. 1968 encompasses the worlds of youth and music, politics, war, economics, assassinations, riots, demonstrations and the media, and shows us how we got to where we are today.
A riveting, evocative, entertaining read.
—— ObserverEminently readable... Will bring a flood of memories of an exceptional year in the exceptional 1960s
—— The EconomistAn expansive, explosive account
—— EsquireKurlansky is a very superior journalist: diligent in his research, quirkily original in his insights, swift and clear in his storytelling. 1968 is a riveting, evocative, entertaining read
—— ObserverThe best political diarist of our time
—— Financial Times'Man is an excellent guide...well-versed in Mongolian, he has travelled extensively in the country while researching the more mysterious elements Genghis' life, and this experience shines through the book...he writes knowledgeably'
—— Literary ReviewA top biography...This is great, grisly stuff and an education for anyone
—— Evening Standard... This bright, engaging and breezy book ... suits the tenor of our times.
—— The TimesA remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event
—— New York Times Book ReviewThe Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust'
—— New York TimesA quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics
—— Washington PostAll too infrequently, a book comes along that' s as daring as it is acclaimed. Art Spiegelman's Maus is just such a book
—— EsquireA remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution... at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book. Brilliant, just brilliant
—— Jules FeifferMaus is a masterpiece, and it's in the nature of such things to generate mysteries, and pose more questions than they answer. But if the notion of a canon means anything, Maus is there at the heart of it. Like all great stories, it tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect
—— Philip PullmanSpiegelman's Maus changed comics forever. Comics now can be about anything
—— Alison BechdelReading [his work] has been an amazing lesson in storytelling
—— Etgar KeretIt can be easy to forget how much of a game-changer Maus was.
—— Washington Post