Nineteen Sixty-Eight; A Personal Report

New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 194 pages. A Timetable. Some wear at top edge of DJ. Inscribed by the author, Hans Koning, on the front free endpaper. Inscription reads: To Maria Landolfo, with thanks! Wash DC, 10/20/87, Hans K. Hans Koning (born Hans K�nigsberger, since 1949 officially Hans Konigsberger) (July 12, 1921 - April 13, 2007), was a Dutch author of over 40 fiction and non-fiction books, was also a prolific journalist, contributing for almost 60 years to many periodicals including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, and De Groene Amsterdammer. He used the pen name Hans Koningsberger (with an added letter 'n'), and from 1972 Hans Koning. During the Vietnam War he turned his attention to protest, helping to found the still-active 'RESIST' organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Noam Chomsky among others. For the next thirty years he wrote fiction and non-fiction and was a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for creative writers, for fiction. Four of his novels were made into films: A Walk with Love and Death, which was Anjelica Huston's first film, directed by her father, John Huston, The Revolutionary, starring Jon Voight, Death of a Schoolboy, for the BBC London, and The Petersburg-Cannes Express. 1968 was a year of destiny. To many it promised a great adventure, the dawn of a new, Aquarian age when all lost hopes would be restored. Others lived in fear of the social chaos they felt looming. Both the hope and the fear went unfulfilled, but 1968 marked a turning point in history. Things were never quite the same afterward. The calendar of 1968 is a calendar of national and personal dramas. The Tet Offensive, which temporarily threw back American forces on the battlefield and permanently altered American perceptions of the war at home. The Massacre at Mylai. Lyndon B. Johnson's parallel decisions to halt the bombing in North Vietnam and not to seek re-election. The deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. The brutal end of a brief "Prague Spring," as Russian troops marched into Czechoslovakia. Sparked by these events, and others, was a wave of popular agitation and demonstrations on university campuses and city streets, from Columbia and Berkeley to the Sorbonne, and from Paris to Chicago. Derived from a Publishers Weekly report: To Koning, novelist and activist, the radical promise that 1968 held was not the dawn of a New Age or social revolution. Rather, it was the realization by large sectors of the American people that our leaders and the mass media had consistently lied to us about U.S. motives abroad and exploitive conditions at home. For many, the author stresses, 1968 marked a turn away from self-contemplation, toward a shared belief that collective action could make a difference. Koning, who was active in antiwar protests, writes from an insider's perspective as he re-creates the sense of urgency felt by many throughout 1968.