"1968! The Year the Dream Died." Just a little background from a book

[KoKo]

review to throw out here.

===========================================================================

The Year the Dream Died : Revisiting 1968 in America


The Year the Dream Died : Revisiting 1968 in America
by Authors: Jules Witcover
Released: 01 June, 1998
ISBN: 0446674710
Paperback



The Year the Dream Died : Revisiting 1968 in America > Customer Review #1: Witcover Focuses on 1968 Presidential Campaign

Witcover focuses on the 1968 presidential campaign and in so doing reveals a great deal about American society. This is not a book that goes into American politics with any depth, but it is well-written so that the events he covers come alive. Witcover moves month-by-month through an incredible year selecting key details that hold the readers attention. Kennedy and McCarthy are the primary focal points in his text for the spring, while Nixon and Humphrey emerge as the focus of the rest of the book, but all the other characters are also there: Nixon, Agnew, Romney, Rockefeller, Reagan and - of course - LBJ. The book climaxes (as does the year) with the Democratic National convention and police riot in Chicago. The details in this section move you from laughter to tears within a few pages - there is that kind of power to Witcovers writing. A weakness in the book is that Martin Luther King, the civil rights, poor peoples, and Black power movements are not covered in sufficient depth to be anything other than props for the "real" story. If you are not looking for deep scholarship on American politics and social movements you will find this book enjoyable reading and you will have a hard time putting it down.

The Year the Dream Died : Revisiting 1968 in America > Customer Review #2: The politics of a pivotal year in U.S. history

"The Year the Dream Died" is probably the best and most comprehensive account yet of the 1968 presidential election. Nineteen sixty-eight was a strange and terrible year in American history, a year in which we endured the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, an escalating war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, the quixotic campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace, chaos at the Chicago Democratic convention, and finally Richard Nixons rise to the presidency.

Witcover is a veteran political reporter, and this book focuses heavily on U.S. politics rather than on the events of the world at large. Theres a lot of day-to-day detail on what the candidates did and said, and it sometimes becomes tedious. On the other hand, Witcover pays relatively little attention to other interesting developments around the world, such as the progress of the war in Vietnam, the Prague Spring, the student rebellion in Paris, and popular culture. It was a great and important year for popular music, yet the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones get only a very brief mention. Rather than the grand "Revisiting 1968 in America," the books subtitle should have been something specific to politics, like "Revisiting the 1968 Presidential Election."

Although Witcover provides a generally balanced portrait of each of the men at the center of national politics in 1968, Bobby Kennedy is clearly his favorite, and like so many other commentators, he cant resist speculating about how much better the world might have been if Kennedy had survived and been elected president. On the other hand, McCarthy comes across as an otherworldly pied piper who somehow managed to captivate the nations youth and a handful of its intellectuals, despite having little interest in campaigning, or indeed in the presidency itself. Humphrey is a bland and ineffectual figure caught in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson, regularly failing to seize opportunities to score political points but somehow coming from far behind Nixon to lose the election by only a small margin. Witcover gives Nixon credit mostly for clever image-making and keeping a lid on his darker side, without really exploring Nixons broad appeal to the American people.

In the last chapter of the book, Witcover offers a kind of post-mortem on the 1968 election, quoting from interviews with participants across the political spectrum from Tom Hayden to Patrick Buchanan, and from commentators like Arthur Schlesinger, William Bennett, Richard Goodwin and Taylor Branch. Its the best chapter in the book, and should be required reading for any serious student of the 1960s. Its key point is that the 1968 election represented a conservative backlash against the various forces of dissent and disorder that had begun to flourish in America, the beginning of the conservative ascendancy that dominates American politics to this day.

The Year the Dream Died : Revisiting 1968 in America > Customer Review #3: A year of unprecedented disappointment and heartache

Youve no doubt heard of that phrase, "Born under a bad sign". Well, how about born in a bad year? Thats the circumstances underlying your humble reviewer, but it didnt take Jules Witcovers 1968-The Year The Dream Died, to make me figure that my year was a rotten vintage.

Witcover points to the Kennedy assassination in 1963 as the point where things began to sour. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, future Senator of New York, then assistant secretary of Labour said in the wake of JFKs death, "Well laugh again. Its just that well never be young again."

That whole disaster of a year that was the third straight year of U.S. involvement in Vietnam was also a presidential election year, during which Democratic disunity and third party candidate George Wallace gave Richard Nixon a new address--1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It also didnt help matters for Hubert Humphrey that his hands were tied in his election bid. He couldnt actively criticize LBJ, who was concentrating on conducting the war.

But the two events that spelled the death of optimism were the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The latters death is covered in a chapter aptly titled "Murder of Hope." It figured. The nation still hadnt completely healed after the JFK assassination and the murder of these two figures served to scar the nation even more.

Nixon, Agnew, Johnson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Lt. William Calley were some of the dark forces at work that year, but the most ridiculous by far was General Curtis LeMay, that lunatic who seriously thought of using nukes in Vietnam and embarassed George Wallace, who tapped him to be his running mate without foresight.

My Lai demonstrated how brutally insane the situation in Vietnam had become. How could American soldiers actually contemplate massacring 567 unarmed civilians, when in World War II, they were considered heroes?

Other events covered: the riots in Chicago, the Pueblo incident in North Korea, the Prague Spring, the presidential campaign, and the student protests that inflamed universities.

Each chapter represents a month of that dreadful year, and at the beginning of each chapter is a brief timeline of what else occurred, be they deaths of famous people, e.g. Helen Keller, or opening days of key films e.g. Yellow Submarine.

However, at the end, Witcover argues alternative scenarios. Had RFK lived, he would have taken the Democratic nomination AND the White House, ended Vietnam, and worked with MLK to heal the racial divide in the country. Or if Eugene McCarthy had decided to endorse Hubert Humphrey earlier in the race, Humphrey would have defeated Nixon. All of this and more is soberingly reviewed in a thorough coverage of that fateful year.

http://www.earth-religions.com/Year_the_Dream_Died_Revisit_Ing_1968_in_American_0446674710.html

[riverwalker]

1. They all grew up and had babies

and never bothered to teach them about the Geneva Conventions, Human Rights or the Nurenberg trials. RFK and MLK may have died, but we didn't. Whats our excuse?

[KoKo]

2. The Year in Review....to see the similarities to today.

1968
http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/index0.php?page=25292607.htm

January 5, 1968 - Operation Niagara I to map NVA positions around Khe Sanh begins.

January 21, 1968 - 20,000 NVA troops under the command of Gen. Giap attack the American air base at Khe Sanh. A 77 day siege begins as 5000 U.S. Marines in the isolated outpost are encircled. The siege attracts enormous media attention back in America, with many comparisons made to the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu in which the French were surrounded then defeated.

"I don't want any damn Dinbinfoo," an anxious President Johnson tells Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Earle Wheeler. As Johnson personally sends off Marine reinforcements, he states "...the eyes of the nation and the eyes of the entire world, the eyes of all of history itself, are on that little brave band of defenders who hold the pass at Khe Sanh..." Johnson issues presidential orders to the Marines to hold the base and demands a guarantee "signed in blood" from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they will succeed.

Operation Niagara II then begins a massive aerial supply effort to the besieged Marines along with heavy B-52 bombardment of NVA troop positions. At the peak of the battle, NVA soldiers are hit round-the-clock every 90 minutes by groups of three B-52s which drop over 110,000 tons of bombs during the siege, the heaviest bombardment of a small area in the history of warfare.

January 31, 1968 - The turning point of the war occurs as 84,000 Viet Cong guerrillas aided by NVA troops launch the Tet Offensive attacking a hundred cities and towns throughout South Vietnam.

The surprise offensive is closely observed by American TV news crews in Vietnam which film the U.S. embassy in Saigon being attacked by 17 Viet Cong commandos, along with bloody scenes from battle areas showing American soldiers under fire, dead and wounded. The graphic color film footage is then quickly relayed back to the states for broadcast on nightly news programs. Americans at home thus have a front row seat in their living rooms to the Viet Cong/NVA assaults against their fathers, sons and brothers, ten thousand miles away. "The whole thing stinks, really," says a Marine under fire at Hue after more than 100 Marines are killed.

January 31-March 7 - In the Battle for Saigon during Tet, 35 NVA and Viet Cong battalions are defeated by 50 battalions of American and Allied troops that had been positioned to protect the city on a hunch by Lt. Gen. Fred C. Weyand, a veteran of World War II in the Pacific. Nicknamed the "savior of Saigon," Weyand had sensed the coming attack, prepared his troops, and on February 1 launched a decisive counter-attack against the Viet Cong at Tan Son Nhut airport thus protecting nearby MACV and South Vietnamese military headquarters from possible capture.

January 31-March 2 - In the Battle for Hue during Tet, 12,000 NVA and Viet Cong troops storm the lightly defended historical city, then begin systematic executions of over 3000 "enemies of the people" including South Vietnamese government officials, captured South Vietnamese officers, and Catholic priests. South Vietnamese troops and three U.S. Marine battalions counter-attack and engage in the heaviest fighting of the entire Tet Offensive. They retake the old imperial city, house by house, street by street, aided by American air and artillery strikes. On February 24, U.S. Marines occupy the Imperial Palace in the heart of the citadel and the battle soon ends with a North Vietnamese defeat. American losses are 142 Marines killed and 857 wounded, 74 U.S. Army killed and 507 wounded. South Vietnamese suffer 384 killed and 1830 wounded. NVA killed are put at over 5000.

February 1, 1968 - In Saigon during Tet, a suspected Viet Cong guerrilla is shot in the head by South Vietnam's police chief Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, in full view of an NBC news cameraman and an Associated Press still photographer. The haunting AP photo taken by Eddie Adams appears on the front page of most American newspapers the next morning. Americans also observe the filmed execution on NBC TV.

Another controversy during Tet, and one of the most controversial statements of the entire war, is made by an American officer who states, 'We had to destroy it, in order to save it,' referring to a small city near Saigon leveled by American bombs. His statement is later used by many as a metaphor for the American experience in Vietnam.

February 2, 1968 - President Johnson labels the Tet Offensive "a complete failure."

For the North Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive is both a military and political failure in Vietnam. The "general uprising" they had hoped to ignite among South Vietnamese peasants against the Saigon government never materialized. Viet Cong had also come out of hiding to do most of the actual fighting, suffered devastating losses, and never regained their former strength. As a result, most of the fighting will be taken over by North Vietnamese regulars fighting a conventional war. Tet's only success, and an unexpected one, was in eroding grassroots support among Americans and in Congress for continuing the war indefinitely.

February 8, 1968 - 21 U.S. Marines are killed by NVA at Khe Sanh.

February 27, 1968 - Influential CBS TV news anchorman Walter Cronkite, who just returned from Saigon, tells Americans during his CBS Evening News broadcast that he is certain "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

February 28, 1968 - Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Wheeler, at the behest of Gen. Westmoreland, asks President Johnson for an additional 206,000 soldiers and mobilization of reserve units in the U.S.

March 1, 1968 - Clark Clifford, renowned Washington lawyer and an old friend of the President, becomes the new U.S. Secretary of Defense. For the next few days, Clifford conducts an intensive study of the entire situation in Vietnam, discovers there is no concept or overall plan anywhere in Washington for achieving victory in Vietnam, then reports to President Johnson that the United States should not escalate the war. "The time has come to decide where we go from here," he tells Johnson.

March 2, 1968 - 48 U.S. Army soldiers are killed during an ambush at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon.

March 10, 1968 - The New York Times breaks the news of Westmoreland's 206,000 troop request. The Times story is denied by the White House. Secretary of State Dean Rusk is then called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and grilled for two days on live TV about the troop request and the overall effectiveness of Johnson's war strategy.

March 11, 1968 - Operation Quyet Thang begins a 28 day offensive by 33 U.S. and South Vietnamese battalions in the Saigon region.

March 12, 1968 - By a very slim margin of just 300 votes, President Johnson defeats anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary election. This indicates that political support for Johnson is seriously eroding.

Public opinion polls taken after the Tet Offensive revealed Johnson's overall approval rating has slipped to 36 percent, while approval of his Vietnam war policy slipped to 26 percent.

March 14, 1968 - Senator Robert F. Kennedy offers President Johnson a confidential political proposition. Kennedy will agree to stay out of the presidential race if Johnson will renounce his earlier Vietnam strategy and appoint a committee, including Kennedy, to chart a new course in Vietnam. Johnson spurns the offer.

March 16, 1968 - Robert F. Kennedy announces his candidacy for the presidency. Polls indicate Kennedy is now more popular than the President.

During his campaign, Kennedy addresses the issue of his participation in forming President John F. Kennedy's Vietnam policy by stating, "past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation."

March 16, 1968 - Over 300 Vietnamese civilians are slaughtered in My Lai hamlet by members of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry U.S. Army, while participating in an airborne assault against suspected Viet Cong encampments in Quang Ngai Province. Upon entering My Lai and finding no Viet Cong, the Americans begin killing every civilian in sight, interrupted only by helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson who lands and begins evacuating civilians after realizing what is happening.

March 28, 1968 - The initial report by participants at My Lai states that 69 Viet Cong soldiers were killed and makes no mention of civilian causalities.

The My Lai massacre is successfully concealed for a year, until a series of letters from Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour spark an official Army investigation that results in Charlie Company Commander, Capt. Ernest L. Medina, First Platoon Leader, Lt. William Calley, and 14 others being brought to trial by the Army. A news photos of the carnage, showing a mass of dead children, women and old men, remains one of the most enduring images of America's involvement in Vietnam.

March 23, 1968 - During a secret meeting in the Philippines, Gen Wheeler informs Gen. Westmoreland that President Johnson will approve only 13,500 additional soldiers out of the original 206,000 requested. Gen. Wheeler also instructs Westmoreland to urge the South Vietnamese to expand their own war effort.

March 25, 1968 - Clark Clifford convenes the "Wise Men," a dozen distinguished elder statesmen and soldiers, including former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and World War II General Omar Bradley at the State Department for dinner. They are given a blunt assessment of the situation in Vietnam, including the widespread corruption of the Saigon government and the unlikely prospect for military victory "under the present circumstances."

March 26, 1968 - The "Wise Men" gather at the White House for lunch with the President. They now advocate U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, with only four of those present dissenting from that opinion.

March 31, 1968 - President Johnson stuns the world by announcing his surprise decision not to seek re-election. He also announces a partial bombing halt and urges Hanoi to begin peace talks. "We are prepared to move immediately toward peace through negotiations." As a result, peace talks soon begin. The bombing halt only affects targets north of the 20th parallel, including Hanoi.

April 1, 1968 - The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) begins Operation Pegasus to reopen Route 9, the relief route to the besieged Marines at Khe Sanh.

April 4, 1968 - Civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis. Racial unrest then erupts in over 100 American cities.

April 8, 1968 - The siege of Khe Sanh ends with the withdrawal of NVA troops from the area as a result of intensive American bombing and the reopening of Route 9. NVA losses during the siege are estimated up to 15,000. U.S. Marines suffered 199 killed and 830 wounded. 1st Cavalry suffered 92 killed and 629 wounded reopening Route 9. The U.S. command then secretly shuts down the Khe Sanh air base and withdraws the Marines. Commenting on the heroism of U.S. troops that defended Khe Sanh, President Johnson states "...they vividly demonstrated to the enemy the utter futility of his attempts to win a military victory in the South." A North Vietnamese official labels the closing of Khe Sanh air base as America's "gravest defeat" so far.

April 11, 1968 - Defense Secretary Clifford announces Gen. Westmoreland's request for 206,000 additional soldiers will not be granted.

April 23, 1968 - Anti-war activists at Columbia University seize five buildings.

April 27, 1968 - In New York, 200,000 students refuse to attend classes as a protest.

April 30-May 3 - The Battle of Dai Do occurs along the Demilitarized Zone as NVA troops seek to open an invasion corridor into South Vietnam. They are halted by a battalion of U.S. Marines nicknamed "the Magnificent Bastards" under the command of Lt. Col. William Weise. Aided by heavy artillery and air strikes, NVA suffer 1568 killed. 81 Marines are killed and 297 wounded. 29 U.S. Army are killed supporting the Marines and 130 wounded.

For the time being, this defeat ends North Vietnam's hope of successfully invading the South. They will wait four years, until 1972, before trying again, after most of the Americans have gone. It will actually take seven years, until 1975, for them to succeed.

May 5, 1968 - Viet Cong launch "Mini Tet," a series of rocket and mortar attacks against Saigon and 119 cities and military installations throughout South Vietnam. The U.S. responds with air strikes using Napalm and high explosives.

May 10, 1968 - An NVA battalion attacks the Special Forces camp at Kham Duc along the border of Laos. The isolated camp had been established in 1963 to monitor North Vietnamese infiltration. Now encircled by NVA, the decision is made to evacuate via C-130 transport planes. At the conclusion of the successful airlift, it is discovered that three U.S. Air Force controllers have accidentally been left behind. Although the camp is now over-run by NVA and two C-130s have already been shot down, Lt. Col. Joe M. Jackson pilots a C-123 Provider, lands on the air strip under intense fire, gathers all three controllers, then takes off. For this, Jackson is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

May 10, 1968 - Peace talks begin in Paris but soon stall as the U.S. insists that North Vietnamese troops withdraw from the South, while the North Vietnamese insist on Viet Cong participation in a coalition government in South Vietnam. This marks the beginning of five years of on-again off-again official talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam in Paris.

June 5, 1968 - Robert F. Kennedy is shot and mortally wounded in Los Angeles just after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election.

July 1968 - Congress passes a ten percent income tax surcharge to defray the ballooning costs of the war.

July 1, 1968 - General Westmoreland is replaced as U.S. commander in Vietnam by General Creighton W. Abrams.

July 1, 1968 - The Phoenix program is established to crush the secret Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI) in South Vietnam. The VCI, estimated at up to 70,000 Communist guerrillas, has been responsible for a long-standing campaign of terror against Americans, South Vietnamese government officials, village leaders and innocent civilians.

However, the Phoenix program, which is controlled through CORDS under the direction of Robert Komer, generates huge controversy in America concerning numerous alleged assassinations of suspected Viet Cong operatives by South Vietnamese trained by the U.S. The controversy, generated in part through North Vietnamese propaganda, eventually results in Congressional hearings. Testifying in 1971 before Congress, Komer's successor William E. Colby states, "The Phoenix program was not a program of assassination. The Phoenix program was a part of the overall pacification program." Colby admits that 20,587 Viet Cong had been killed "mostly in combat situations...by regular or paramilitary forces."

July 3, 1968 - Three American prisoners of war are released by Hanoi.

July 19, 1968 - President Johnson and South Vietnam's President Thieu meet in Hawaii.

August 8, 1968 - Richard M. Nixon is chosen as the Republican presidential candidate and promises "an honorable end to the war in Vietnam."

August 28, 1968 - During the Democratic national convention in Chicago, 10,000 anti-war protesters gather on downtown streets and are then confronted by 26,000 police and national guardsmen. The brutal crackdown is covered live on network TV. 800 demonstrators are injured.

The United States is now experiencing a level of social unrest unseen since the American Civil War era, a hundred years earlier. There have been 221 student protests at 101 colleges and universities thus far in 1968.

September 30, 1968 - The 900th U.S. aircraft is shot down over North Vietnam.

October 1968 - Operation Sealord begins the largest combined naval operation of the entire war as over 1200 U.S. Navy and South Vietnamese Navy gunboats and warships target NVA supply lines extending from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta. NVA supply camps in the Delta and along other waterways are also successfully disrupted during the two-year operation.

October 21, 1968 - The U.S. releases 14 North Vietnamese POWs.

October 27, 1968 - In London, 50,000 protest the war.

October 31, 1968 - Operation Rolling Thunder ends as President Johnson announces a complete halt of U.S. bombing of North Vietnam in the hope of restarting the peace talks.

Throughout the three and a half year bombing campaign, the U.S. dropped a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, the equivalent of 800 tons per day, with little actual success in halting the flow of soldiers and supplies into the South or in damaging North Vietnamese morale. In fact, the opposite has occurred as the North Vietnamese have patriotically rallied around their Communist leaders as a result of the onslaught. By now, many towns south of Hanoi have been leveled with a U.S. estimate of 52,000 civilian deaths.

During Rolling Thunder, North Vietnam's sophisticated, Soviet-supplied air defense system managed to shoot down 922 U.S. aircraft during 2380 sorties flown by B-52 bombers and over 300,000 sorties by U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter-bombers.

November 1968 - William E. Colby replaces Robert Komer as head of CORDS.

November 5, 1968 - Republican Richard M. Nixon narrowly defeats Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the U.S. presidential election.

November 27, 1968 - President-elect Nixon asks Harvard professor Henry Kissinger to be his National Security Advisor. Kissinger accepts.

By year's end, U.S. troop levels reached 495,000 with 30,000 American deaths to date. In 1968, over a thousand a month were killed. An estimated 150,000 soldiers from North Vietnam infiltrated the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1968. Although the U.S. conducted 200 air strikes each day against the trail in late 1968, up to 10,000 NVA supply trucks are en route at any given time.

[JPJones]

5. You forgot to include the day I was born

I guess I need to keep working on the whole globally indispensable thing.

[Cocoa]

my birth year

my poor father wanted a drink while he was waiting for me to be born, but they weren't allowing
any liquor sales on the west side of Chicago because of riots. :-(

[keithyboy]

10. And remember, MLK was killed not because of his stance on Civil Rights

but for his anti-war activism. They knew he would have the power to pursuade many against the war.

[KoKo]

15. Kick, once again, since some folks are asking about the 60's.

[rebellious woman]

3. I wept for President Kennedy and I wept

for Bobby Kennedy, and I wept for Martin Luther King. America has
not been the same since...When these men were assassinated it's
like the country died with them and never recovered.

[pearl]

4. Thanks KoKo

That was the year I graduated High School. Although the year was
quite a blur for me, it was an awesome time. I guess your post kind of pulled it out of me. 2004 feels more intense than '68 and
that was incredibly intense. I didn't make it to Woodstock in '69 but
was at Newport Beach Pop Festival the summer of love. Thanks for
the review. Peace Man :headbang: :smoke: :headbang:

[The Blue Knight]

6. I just finished reading a biography of Bobby Kennedy.

I'm 17, so RFK was way before my time, but...I cried at the end. I'm not an emotional man, but...just thinking about how different our country could've been if RFK would've won...it just made me depressed.

[KoKo]

11. Thanks...really...n/t

[rapier]

7. notes

It is rather silly to view or write history from a perspective which divides everything from one date.

That said I've always felt that in fact 68 was the year from which all else flowed. By all else I mean the total acendency our nativist 'conservatism'. From that point forward anything considered progressive liberal has been a sad pathetic joke.

Now that conservtism is about to fail. The tell will be when the economy stagnates, or worse. The only question in my mind is what replaces it. One would think from history that a new 'liberal' cycle should follow. I don't think so. The right will take power with guns if necessary. The pretense of democracy will gladly be abondoned if needs be.

[KoKo]

14. Night Kick for DU Insomniacs! Something to keep you busy...Lots to keep

historyphiles busy..:-)'s

:kick:

[Zinfandel]

8. And the right-wing just keeps killing our leaders and potenial leaders

who speak out against loudly...Paul Wellstone, John Lennon, Mel Carnahan (Ashcroft still lost to a dead man) JFK jr. etc...

1968 was the year of my awakening...fifteen yrs. old going to the Avalon Ballroom & the Fillmore, first hit of acid, beautiful earthy girls everywhere, then to protest marches...I was just beginning my search, growing up in San Francisco...So fucking much starting happening to me and all around me beginning in 1968...My life did a 180 in 1968...

[Rowdyboy]

9. You would also enjoy "An American Melodrama: The Presidential

Election of 1968" by Chester, Hodgeson and Page. I believe they were three British journalists who covered the campaign and wrote the book around 1970. Hard to find but well worth the time.

[Gman]

12. For some reason I forget other than to just do it,

I decided at the beginning of 1968 to keep the section A from every newspaper that year. Even as a young teen I was a news junkie. Little did I know what a year 1968 would be. I still have all the major ones in a cedar chest.

[KoKo]

13. Hang on to them...E-Bay and History await..

Little did we know...:-)'s