cover image The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968

The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968

David Caute. HarperCollins Publishers, $24.95 (514pp) ISBN 978-0-06-015870-5

Caute's opinionated social history links the U.S. counterculture and political protest of the 1960s to global events. Interwoven with his month-by-month chronicle of the American scene during one pivotal year are journalistic ""news flashes'' that spotlight the Soviet invasion of Prague, Tokyo student uprisings, Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave cinema, the British underground art scene and stirrings in Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Rome, Mexico, Spain, Yugoslavia. The effect is a wide-angled reappraisal of the '60s. Writing from a leftist perspective, Caute seemingly spares no one. The political pretensions of rock music, U.S. crimes in Vietnam, black radicals playing upon white liberal guilt and Eugene McCarthy's idealism are all skewered. Caute, author of The Great Fear, brings a committed, impassioned, authoritative voice to this challenging look back. Photos not seen by PW. (February)