1968: Marching in the Streets Book

Nineteen sixty-eight. A radical wave swept the world. From Washington to London, Paris to Saigon, Berlin to Lahore, Chicago to Mexico City, people took to the streets demanding emancipation. In Vietnam, the guerrilla armies launched the Têt (New Year) offensive, which shattered the United States' military confidence and changed the course of history.

A peace movement without precedent arose in the United States and united men and women, blacks and whites, soldiers and civilians against the war-makers in the Pentagon and the White House. They challenged their president with one cry: "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" The war in Vietnam had come home. Robert Kennedy came out for peace and was killed; Martin Luther King, Jr., called for an end to the war and was assassinated; Black Power was born as young black Americans impatiently demanded change. The exemplary courage of protesters in the United States spread like wildfire throughout six continents. And as the voices of the oppressed began to make themselves heard, the modern women's movement was born and feminism began to travel the globe.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a year of revolution. Barricades went up in Paris as 10 million workers went on strike and occupied their factories. In Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring bloomed, offering Europe a glimpse of the popular sentiment that would ultimately overturn the Soviet regime.

In 1968: Marching in the Streets, Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins capture the mood of this pivotal year and the feelings that motivated those who wanted to change the world. These were days of hope and love, of satire, music, poetry and a new wave in cinema. 1968: Marching in the Streets is a celebration of the people and an explanation of the events that marked that year. Firsthand accounts from every continent reveal the universal nature of the ferment of '68. It was a year in which millions fought shoulder to shoulder against war, dogma and repression of every sort. This book is their story.