Mark Kurlansky became famous for his unexpected choice of heroes for his “Stories” - he would write “A General History of Salt” (Russian translation in 2007), then “The History of Cod,” or “The History of Nonviolent Resistance.” This time the hero of his book was the year. He names four factors that created 1968: the civil rights movement, the emergence of a younger generation as a unified, conscious force, the Vietnam War, and television news, already uniting the world but not yet tamed by censorship. It was in that year that the simultaneity of events taking place in different parts of the world with a variety of participants and for a variety of reasons, and people’s knowledge of this simultaneity became an independent factor in history. Kurlansky is honest about his bias: "I was born in 1948 and belong to the generation that hated and protested the Vietnam War." And it declares its goal to be a reminder of the time “when people expressed their opinions and were not afraid to offend anyone with it.” The book ends with gratitude to “everyone who said “No!” - and, most importantly, to those who continue to say this word now." The book is structured chronologically - from January to December, but this is not a chronicle, but a coherent story about many plots lines - the Prague Spring, the Vietnam War, student riots in Paris and Chicago, etc. In 1968, not only a lot of things happened, but also a lot of things began, and Kurlansky carefully notes these beginnings, including vocabulary ones: that’s when. started saying “blacks” instead of “negroes”, “Palestinians” instead of “Arabs living in Israel”, etc.