1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick - Book Review

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS 

1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick

1969 was my 29th year, I was there, and this incredibly well-written and well-edited book took me back to a place I nearly missed in my action packed fast moving life. I especially loved the book for its rapid fire factual delivery of the real history. The book is worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS

The FBI declared war on the Black Panther Party, and the Weathermen declared war on America. The Stonewall Riots inspired the birth of the Gay Rights movement, and the Indians of All Tribes’ seizure of Alcatraz Island began the Red Power movement. The Santa Barbara Oil Slick, the Cuyahoga River fire, and People’s Park gave impetus to the Ecology movement. It was the year when the Revolution came to the suburbs, and when they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. In a single year, America saw the peaks and valleys of an entire decade—the death of the old and the birth of the

There had been a darker side to him. Classmates remembered Nixon as a loner with streaks of meanness, even paranoia. Hailing from a modest, middle-class, Quaker family, he would carry a lifelong suspicion of those with privileged backgrounds.

During the inaugural parade, the new president encountered the extremes that would mark much of his term. A float from the group “Up with People” sent good vibes to the onlookers lined up in their winter coats. Cheering crowds greeted him for the first few blocks as the presidential motorcade proceeded on its way from the Capitol building to Nixon’s new home on Pennsylvania Avenue. But as the parade reached 13th Street, a double line of police struggled to keep back a group of war protesters, who threw sticks, stones, cans, and bottles at the presidential limousine while chanting, “Four more years of death!” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win.” One protester brandished a sign that mocked Nixon’s ’68 campaign slogan: NIXON’S THE ONE—THE NO. 1 WAR CRIMINAL. Some demonstrators spit at the police. Others took the small American flags that had been distributed by local Boy Scouts and burned them. It was the first time in the nation’s history that an inauguration parade had been so marred.

Onto 15th Street, the atmosphere changed. Onlookers assembled in front of the Washington Hotel and the Treasury Building applauded the new chief executive. Nixon ordered the sunroof opened so that he could stand and wave to the people—his people.

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