cover image Turning Point, 1968

Turning Point, 1968

Irwin Unger, Debi Unger. Scribner Book Company, $24.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-18696-2

The year 1968 saw not only the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago; that pivotal year, by the Ungers' reckoning, marked the collapse of the liberal consensus of the '60s, and saw the New Left shift from participatory ideals to bombs and rhetoric. This sweeping, balanced, vivid popular history by a husband-wife team (he is a professor of history at New York University, she is a journalist) surveys many facets of that decade. The Ungers venture forthright opinions; for example, they see John Kennedy's war on poverty as motivated by middle-class guilt, and they spurn the Black Muslims' ``profoundly anti-white'' teachings. Along with the familiar sagas of the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights crusades, the authors catch the ferment of the underground press, community action programs, welfare rights militancy, the free speech and sexual freedom movements. Every page brims with relevance to the 1980s. Photos not seen by PW. (October)