1968: Today's Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change

by Marc Aronson (Editor), Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Editor) Narrated by Jeff Cummings, Adenrele Ojo

Overview

Welcome to 1968 - a revolution in a book. Essays, memoirs, and more by fourteen award-winning authors offer unique perspectives on one of the world's most tumultuous years.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a pivotal year that grew more intense with each day. As thousands of Vietnamese and Americans were killed in war, students across four continents took over colleges and city streets. Assassins murdered Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy. Demonstrators turned out in Prague and Chicago, and in Mexico City, young people and Olympic athletes protested. In those intense months, generations battled and the world wobbled on the edge of some vast change that was exhilarating one day and terrifying the next. To capture that extraordinary year, editors Marc Aronson and Susan Campbell Bartoletti created an anthology that showcases many genres of nonfiction. Some contributors use a broad canvas, others take a close look at a moment, and matched essays examine the same experience from different points of view. As we face our own moments of crisis and division, 1968 reminds us that we've clashed before and found a way forward - and that looking back can help map a way ahead.

With contributions by:
Jennifer Anthony
Marc Aronson
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Loree Griffin Burns
Paul Fleischman
Omar Figueras
Laban Carrick Hill
Mark Kurlansky
Lenore Look
David Lubar
Kate MacMillan
Kekla Magoon
Jim Murphy
Elizabeth Partridge

Editorial Reviews

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Narrators Jeff Cummings and Adenrele Ojo give refreshing energy to 14 wide-ranging essays about the global upheaval and social shifts of the year 1968. Both narrators provide a scholarly tone to the broad- reaching discussion of social movements like the Cultural Revolution and the Prague Spring. They strike an introspective tone for the more personal stories, one focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination and another reveling in the freedom of riding bikes across the country. Elizabeth Partridge’s poem “Nightly News,” woven throughout, captures the mounting body counts of the War in Vietnam. Though sophisticated and balanced, the diversity of this anthology suffers some with only two narrators. Overall, though, the authors add helpful context to a year bursting with newsworthy moments fit for comparison to our own time. E.A.N. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Fourteen authors, including Omar Figueras, Lenore Look, and editors Aronson and Bartoletti, write about the tumultuous events of 1968...The book's strength lies in the way different voices and different angles come together into an integrated whole. Fascinating and accomplished.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Authors explore the tumultuous global events of 1968 in this anthology...the differences in their backgrounds make for a vivid, dynamic account of the complicated, intersecting politics behind brief accounts in history books. With an approach promoting critical thinking, this collection will likely help illuminate a deeply important year in world history and encourage fresh thinking about our current contentious moment.
—Booklist

The book begins with the essays, but points back to scholarship, or into the world itself, in a delightful way. This wide-ranging anthology is useful as both a print symposium on the topic of 1968 and as a source book for further study.
—School Library Journal

Fourteen essays, interspersed with Elizabeth Partridge’s “Nightly News” commentaries, examine events above and below the fold of a most newsworthy year, 1968...it’s the less frequently told stories that set this volume apart. Susan Bartoletti’s lively, resonant take on the protest theatrics of Abbie Hoffman along with David Lubar’s thoughtful overview of the state of stand-up comedy offer perspective on the place of humor, satire, and the absurd in the media.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

School Library Journal

09/01/2018
Gr 7 Up—This anthology addresses "the seismic shifts and splits" that characterized the late 1960s and early 70s, including entries on the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the influence of Communism on democracy, and the influence of democracy on Communism. The book also touches on the rise of technology, the history of comedy, and the place of athletes in activism. Many of the essays are personal narratives, which lends the collection a sense of immediacy and emotional intimacy. The editors have crafted a comprehensive work, and while not every essay will compel every reader, there is something to appeal to almost every interest. That said, there are chapters where sexual assault and beatings are described, and David Lubar's "Running with Sharp Shticks" is a miss; Lubar hints at controversy surrounding various comics and their routines but doesn't really dive in, using "the lens of twenty-first century sensibilities and sensitivities" as reasoning why a joke "might be seen as an example of racism, a brilliant parody of racism, or an uncomfortable mix of the two." To encourage research, several of the writers include teasers in the forms of names and terms that might be interesting to explore. The book begins with the essays, but points back to scholarship, or into the world itself, in a delightful way. VERDICT This wide-ranging anthology is useful as both a print symposium on the topic of 1968 and as a source book for further study.—Sheri Reda, Wilmette Public Library, IL

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Narrators Jeff Cummings and Adenrele Ojo give refreshing energy to 14 wide-ranging essays about the global upheaval and social shifts of the year 1968. Both narrators provide a scholarly tone to the broad- reaching discussion of social movements like the Cultural Revolution and the Prague Spring. They strike an introspective tone for the more personal stories, one focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination and another reveling in the freedom of riding bikes across the country. Elizabeth Partridge’s poem “Nightly News,” woven throughout, captures the mounting body counts of the War in Vietnam. Though sophisticated and balanced, the diversity of this anthology suffers some with only two narrators. Overall, though, the authors add helpful context to a year bursting with newsworthy moments fit for comparison to our own time. E.A.N. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-07-30

Fourteen authors, including Omar Figueras, Lenore Look, and editors Aronson and Bartoletti, write about the tumultuous events of 1968.

On the 50th anniversary of the year that saw the continuation of the war in Vietnam, the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and riots in Paris, Prague, and Chicago, some writers recollect their childhoods while others tackle events that occurred before they were born. Biracial (black/white) author Kekla Magoon writes of King's and Kennedy's deaths from the perspective of the black community, describing the Black Panthers' community service programs and discussing why the Students for a Democratic Society, an anti-war protest organization run by privileged white college students, did not represent black interests. Laban Carrick Hill, who grew up in an abusive white family in Memphis, remembers how even at age 7 his uncle's racist response the day after King's assassination made him start to question his family's credibility since he knew firsthand what real violence was. Other chapters tell of African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos' protest at the Mexico City Olympics and their support from white Australian Peter Norman; the Chinese Cultural Revolution; the beginning of the end of Communism; and the origins of the computer age. The book's strength lies in the way different voices and different angles come together into an integrated whole.

Fascinating and accomplished. (author's notes, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171613396
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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