1968 saw an extraordinary scale of protests throughout the Western world. In terms of scope, intensity and consequences, everything that happened then can be likened to a world revolution. Millions of strikes by French workers, the radicalization of university youth, protests against the Vietnam War, the fight for minority rights and social justice - the echo of “the long '68” continues to resonate with modern times even fifty years later. Richard Weinen, historian and professor at King's College London, sees in these events not an isolated milestone, but an entire historical period that lasted from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. This is the first attempt to consider from a transnational perspective the entire set of protest movements and uprisings that unfolded in prosperous industrial countries - the United States of America, France, Great Britain and West Germany. The author tries to find out why the developed democracies of the West suddenly found themselves on the verge of a nervous breakdown and how the protests influenced to various social groups - youth, women, workers, sexual minorities. A special place is given to the combination of revolutionary violence and political compromise that was demonstrated in 1968 - a time of radical demands and unfulfilled hopes.