1968 : radical protest and its enemies / Richard Vinen.

"Originally published as The Long '68 in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Penguin Random House UK."--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-377) and index.

Introduction -- Words and 'the thing' : defining 68 -- The 68 generation -- Universities -- The United States -- France -- West Germany -- Britain -- The revolution within the revolution : sexual liberation and the family -- Workers -- Violence -- Defeat and accommodation? -- Conclusion -- The long 68 : a brief chronology.

"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, and gay rights activists can all trace important roots to 1968. Bill Clinton and even Tony Blair are, in many ways, products of that year. 1968 is a striking and original attempt, half a century later, to show how these events, from anti-war marches in the United States to revolts against Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe--which in some respects still seem so current--stemmed from histories and societies that are in practice now extraordinarily remote from our own time. Richard Vinen pursues the story into the 1970s to show both the ever more violent forms of radicalization that arose from 1968 and the brutal reactions from those in power that brought the era to an end."--Jacket.