EDGE Boston

Rob Kirkpatrick says we’ve been getting it all wrong when it comes to the ’60s. When pressed to assign a year to the tumult and cultural clash that defined the decade, most give 1968 - the assassinations of King and Kennedy, the implosion of the Democratic Convention and the election of Nixon, and so on. But Kirkpatrick argues in his new book that it was 1969, less the "end" of the decade than the year that epitomized its conflicts, to which we should be paying attention. sKirpatrick makes his case by trotting out seemingly every event, large or small, that happened in ’69, from the bombing of Cambodia to the Joe Namath-led Jets victory in Super Bowl III which led to the merger of AFL and NFL to prove that yeah, stuff happened then too.

Anyone dim enough to have to pick up 1969 to discover that 1968 wasn’t the be-all and end-all of the radical ’60s probably needs Kirkpatrick’s refresher course. And a lot of the information he compiles in the book is interesting reading; the trouble it is doesn’t lead anywhere. There’s no build-up to a thesis bigger than "1969 is important." Moreover, as often happens in history, many of the events described in the book have roots in the ’60s if not in 1968 specifically. Herein the risk of isolating one year from the great chain; last year’s "Nixonland," which admittedly focused more on the political machinations of the time, shames this book, a video with movement and sound compared to its still photograph. Ther’s a lot of trivia here, but it all ends up looking too trivial, which probably isn’t what Kirkpatrick intended.

by Rob Kirpatrick