The long '68 - Richard Vinen

1968 saw an extraordinary range of protests across much of the western
world. Some of these were genuinely revolutionary - around ten million
French workers went on strike and the whole state teetered on the brink
of collapse. Others were more easily contained, but had profound
longer-term implications; terrorist groups, feminist collectives, gay
rights activists could all trace important roots to 1968. Bill Clinton
and even Tony Blair are, in many ways, the product of that year.

The Long '68
is a striking and original attempt half a century on to show how these
events - from anti-war marches in the United States to revolts against
Soviet oppression in eastern Europe -
which in some ways still seem so
current, stemmed from histories and societies that are in practice now
extraordinarily remote from our own time. The book pursues the story
into the 1970s to show both the ever more violent forms of
radicalization that stemmed from 1968, and the brutal reactions from
those in power that brought the era to an end.