A revised and updated version (published in 2018) of Katsiaficas’ classic book (originally published in 1987) on the uprisings of 1968, notable as the first attempt to understand the peak years of the New Left in a truly global context. There are definitely some quirky elements to this book. I’m not convinced, for instance, that his framing of the circulation of struggle as what he calls “the eros effect” (drawing on the thought of his mentor, Herbert Marcuse) is particularly useful – it seems to kind of mystify things, if you ask me. I’m also not sure what I think of the elevated place that he gives to the Black Panther-led Revolutionary Peoples’ Constitutional Convention in 1970 in his account of the US movement. And as couldn’t help but be true, the global sweep of the book captures some dynamics and some places better than others. Nonetheless, this is a crucially important book. It effectively conveys something important about how struggles move, how they interconnect, how they feed into each other. It conveys something important about the feeling of those years as well, and the sheer density of action and intensity revolutionary ferment. Yes, it is uneven and (by design) broad rather than deep, but in that breadth it captures something real and important about the history that it’s covering. I read it for a very specific purpose, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to read for years anyway, and I’m glad I did.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.