1968: Marching in the Streets

The authors say their book is simply a chronicle of 1968. But chronicles are rarely written with such deft dramatic irony, nor are they usually so ebullient or scattered with jokes. Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins have done something which is a challenge to any historian: they have made utopian rebellion intelligible. The international span makes this book a unique record: Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland as well as women's liberation and Paris, Prague and Vietnam. The utopian ideas of 1968---that knowledge should be accessible, work democratised and time claimed for living and loving, not just for making money--are even more relevant 30 years on.