Chicago 68

Entertaining and scrupulously researched, Chicago '68 reconstructs the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago—an epochal moment in American cultural and political history. By drawing on a wide range of sources, Farber tells and retells the story of the protests in three different voices, from the perspectives of the major protagonists—the Yippies, the National Mobilization to End the War, and Mayor Richard J. Daley and his police. He brilliantly recreates all the excitement and drama, the violently charged action and language of this period of crisis, giving life to the whole set of cultural experiences we call "the sixties." "Chicago '68 was a watershed summer. Chicago '68 is a watershed book. Farber succeeds in presenting a sensitive, fairminded composite portrait that is at once a model of fine narrative history and an example of how one can walk the intellectual tightrope between 'reporting one's findings' and offering judgements about them."—Peter I. Rose, Contemporary Sociology

The 1968 Democratic Convention, best known for police brutality against demonstrators, has been relegated to a dark place in American historical memory. Battleground Chicago ventures beyond the stereotypical image of rioting protestors and violent cops to reevaluate exactly how—and why—the police attacked antiwar activists at the convention. Working from interviews with eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene, Frank Kusch uncovers the other side of the story of ’68, deepening our understanding of a turbulent decade. “Frank Kusch’s compelling account of the clash between Mayor Richard Daley’s men in blue and anti-war rebels reveals why the 1960s was such a painful era for many Americans. . . . to his great credit, [Kusch] allows ‘the pigs’ to speak up for themselves.”—Michael Kazin “Kusch’s history of white Chicago policemen and the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a solid addition to a growing literature on the cultural sensibility and political perspective of the conservative white working class in the last third of the twentieth century.”—David Farber, Journal of American History

During May 1968, students and workers in France united in the biggest strike and the largest mass movement in French history. Protesting capitalism, American imperialism, and Gaullism, 9 million people from all walks of life, from shipbuilders to department store clerks, stopped working. The nation was paralyzed—no sector of the workplace was untouched. Yet, just thirty years later, the mainstream image of May '68 in France has become that of a mellow youth revolt, a cultural transformation stripped of its violence and profound sociopolitical implications. Kristin Ross shows how the current official memory of May '68 came to serve a political agenda antithetical to the movement's aspirations. She examines the roles played by sociologists, repentant ex-student leaders, and the mainstream media in giving what was a political event a predominantly cultural and ethical meaning. Recovering the political language of May '68 through the tracts, pamphlets, and documentary film footage of the era, Ross reveals how the original movement, concerned above all with the question of equality, gained a new and counterfeit history, one that erased police violence and the deaths of participants, removed workers from the picture, and eliminated all traces of anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and the influences of Algeria and Vietnam. May '68 and Its Afterlives is especially timely given the rise of a new mass political movement opposing global capitalism, from labor strikes and anti-McDonald's protests in France to the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

Chicago 1968 represents, perhaps as no other moment in American history, the flashpoint of cultural resistance to a militarized world out of control. In the summer of 1968, still reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy only months earlier, thousands of young people descended on the National Democratic Convention to show their opposition to the Vietnam War and their desire for a Peace platform. The showdown between "the longhairs" and "the pigs" would become one of the most violent and starkly emblematic confrontations ever broadcast on nightly news in the United States. "The whole world was watching," CBS reporter Dan Rather uttered on the floor of the convention center in Chicago, and he was correct: The 1968 Democratic Convention was the first nationally televised political convention. Police and National Guard troops, clashing with protesters, herded tens of thousands of demonstrators into exit-less corridors, and as the mayhem ensued, police indiscriminately cracked heads. Witnessing it all were some of the most attuned minds of the day, including Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Studs Terkel, and the "hard hitting investigative team" Esquire had assembled, which included Terry Southern, William Burroughs, and Jean Genet. Shortly after bumping into Southern at the bar of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, photographer Michael Cooper decided to tag along, gaining official accreditation as photographer.Editors Nile Southern and Adam Cooper, having dreamt for many years about a print collaboration featuring their fathers' collective work-none more poignant than their accounts of the protests at the National Democratic Convention-here present Chicago 1968: The Whole World is Watching, a kaleidoscopic, on-the-ground account, told primarily through the words of Terry Southern and the photographs of Michael Cooper, a fitting tribute to two great artists of the 20th century.

In this landmark work of journalism, Norman Mailer reports on the presidential conventions of 1968, the turbulent year from which today’s bitterly divided country arose. The Vietnam War was raging; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had just been assassinated. In August, the Republican Party met in Miami and picked Richard Nixon as its candidate, to little fanfare. But when the Democrats backed Lyndon Johnson’s ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the city of Chicago erupted. Antiwar protesters filled the streets and the police ran amok, beating and arresting demonstrators and delegates alike, all broadcast on live television—and captured in these pages by one of America’s fiercest intellects. Praise for Miami and the Siege of Chicago “For historians who wish for the presence of a world-class literary witness at crucial moments in history, Mailer in Miami and Chicago was heaven-sent.”—Michael Beschloss, The Washington Post “Extraordinary . . . Mailer [predicted that] ‘we will be fighting for forty years.’ He got that right, among many other things.”—Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic “Often reads like a good, old-fashioned novel in which suspense, character, plot revelations, and pungently describable action abound.”—The New York Review of Books “[A] masterful account . . . To understand 1968, you must read Mailer.”—Chicago Tribune

The first 50-year retrospective of the most tumultuous year the 1960s for activism and radical politics The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. Gay rights, women's rights and civil rights. The Black Panthers and the Vietnam War. The New Left and the New Right. 1968 was a tumultuous year for US politics. 50 years on, Reframing 1968 explores the historical, political and social legacy of 1968 in modern protest movements. The contributors look at how protest has changed in the US, from Students for a Democratic Society and the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, to the Women's Movement in the 1970s, through to the contemporary visibility of the Tea Party and the Occupy movement.

In August 1968, Democrats gather at their National Convention in Chicago to debate a platform for a deeply divided party. Factions are split over issues such as civil rights, infrastructure, and the war on poverty—not to mention the war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, crowds of protesters descend upon the city. Impassioned antiwar demonstrators plan sit-ins and marches, while the absurdist Yippies, determined to make a mockery of the convention, intend to nominate a pig for president. Journalists flood the area to cover the stories of the delegates and protesters. Over the course of this game, players will develop a better understanding of the complexities of the social and cultural tumult that has come to be known as "the Sixties."

"Abbie Hoffman, Yippie non-leader, notorious dope addict and up-and-coming rock group (the WHAT), is currently on trial with seven others for conspiracy to incite riot during the Democratic Convention. When he returned from the Woodstock Festival he had five days before leaving for Chicago to prepare for the trial. Woodstock Nation, which the author wrote in longhand while lying upside down, stoned, on the floor of an unused office of the publisher, is the product of those five days. Other works by Mr. Hoffman include Revolution for the Hell of It and Fuck the System, which he describes as a "tender love epic"."-- Back cover.