Just a roll call is enough to conjure up powerful images for those adult enough to have lived through them: Biafra, Dubcek's Czechoslovakia, Ho Chi Minh, Johnson's resignation, the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. In this thick and engrossingly microscopic book New York author Kurlansky - who wrote the engagingly anecdotal Salt: A World History - contends persuasively that 1968 was more turbulent than any in recent recall. The presidential election in the United States is looming as one of the most significant in recent memory, various African states and Pakistan are tinder boxes under a naked flame, and the Olympic Games - with all that means for terrorists and the disaffected - are on the horizon. Iraq is a quagmire of gun culture, anger and impasse. Islamist terrorism has cast a shadow of fear over the "coalition of the willing", there have been bombs from Baghdad to Madrid and southern Thailand, and the Israel-Palestine conundrum is literally more explosive than a year ago. In politically precarious North Asia both South Korea and Taiwan are suffering internal ructions. Some days you just don't want to get out of bed. With this 2004 year about half gone we appear to be in a volatile time.
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