As Vietnam's former imperial capital, Hue occupied a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people. Over decades of conflict, it had been spared the terrible effects of war. But that all ...changed on January 31, 1968, the eve of Tet-the lunar new year, Vietnam's most important national holiday Tet had previously been marked by a mutual ceasefire, but this time the celebrations and hopes for a happy new year were shattered. All of South Vietnam erupted in a cataclysm of violence as the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive military and political offensive. The American embassy in Saigon came under siege and Vietnam's ancient capital city was captured nearly in its entirety.The only forces immediately available to counterattack into Hue were two Marine infantry companies based ten miles south of the city. For the next four weeks, as the world looked on, fewer than two thousand U.S. Marines fought street by street and building by building, with virtually no air support, to retake the symbols of Hue's political and cultural importance. It was savage work. Ground gained was often measured in yards, with every alley, street corner, window, and garden adding to the butcher's bill. In the end, the Marines retook the city, but scores of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese civilians died there. This pictorial is a testament to their will and their sacrifice.The Vietnam War is often pictured as a jungle conflict, punctuated by American troops fighting in rural hut-filled villages. But in the 1968 Tet Offensive, the war spilled out of the jungle into the streets of Hue City. The battle for Hue became one of the most important of the war, a month of grueling house-to-house fighting through buildings and around civilians. Marines In Hue City documents the intense urban combat in Hue with many never-before-published photographs, including more than one hundred in full color.
From revolution to ethics Bourg, Julian
From revolution to ethics,
c2007, 20070514, 2007, 2007-05-14, 20070101
eBook
Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for ...understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights.
Hotel Mexico Flaherty, George F
2016., 20160823, 2016, 2016-08-16
eBook
In 1968, Mexico prepared to host the Olympic games amid growing civil unrest. The spectacular sports facilities and urban redevelopment projects built by the government in Mexico City mirrored the ...country’s rapid but uneven modernization. In the same year, a street-savvy democratization movement led by students emerged in the city. Throughout the summer, the ‘68 Movement staged protests underscoring a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement. Just ten days before the Olympics began, nearly three hundred student protestors were massacred by the military in a plaza at the core of a new public housing complex. In spite of institutional denial and censorship, the 1968 massacre remains a touchstone in contemporary Mexican culture thanks to the public memory work of survivors and Mexico’s leftist intelligentsia. In this highly original study of the afterlives of the ’68 Movement, George F. Flaherty explores how urban spaces-material but also literary, photographic, and cinematic-became an archive of 1968, providing a framework for de facto modes of justice for years to come
Frederick Aldama’s The Cinema of Robert Rodriguez (2014) was the first full-scale study of one of the most prolific and significant Latino directors making films today. In this companion volume, ...Aldama enlists a corps of experts to analyze a majority of Rodriguez’s feature films, from his first break-out success El Mariachi in 1992 to Machete in 2010. The essays explore the formal and thematic features present in his films from the perspectives of industry (context, convention, and distribution), the film blueprint (auditory and visual ingredients), and consumption (ideal and real audiences). The authors illuminate the manifold ways in which Rodriguez’s films operate internally (plot, character, and event) and externally (audience perception, thought, and feeling). The volume is divided into three parts: “Matters of Mind and Media" includes essays that use psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology to shed light on how Rodriguez’s films complicate Latino identity, as well as how they succeed in remaking audiences’ preconceptions of the world. “Narrative Theory, Cognitive Science, and Sin City: A Case Study" offers tools and models of analysis for the study of Rodriguez’s film re-creation of a comic book (on which Frank Miller was credited as codirector). “Aesthetic and Ontological Border Crossings and Borderlands" considers how Rodriguez’s films innovatively critique fixed notions of Latino identity and experience, as well as open eyes to racial injustices. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how Rodriguez’s career offers critical insights into the filmmaking industry, the creative process, and the consuming and reception of contemporary film.
At 11 o´clock in the evening of 20th August 1968, the armies of four Warsaw Pact countries, the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary, crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia, starting the ...“Operation Danube”. Literally overnight the Czechoslovak experiment with Alexander Dubček´s liberalization reforms was transformed from living reality into history. Although the Soviet Union’s action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for both the unity of the communist bloc and the establishment of the new Soviet foreign doctrine. This book brings the international context of the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia to the center of attention. It brought together experts from within as well as from without Central Europe with the hope of igniting, or, perhaps better, re-igniting an international discussion on the Prague spring, its origins, its unfolding, its aftermath, and, most importantly, the international context.
The volume’s contributors are: Ljubodarg Dimić, Jakub Drábik, Mihail Gruev, Slavomír Michálek, Miklós Mitrovits, Jackques Rupnik, Alexander Stykalin, Mirosław Szumiło, Michal Štefanský, and Virgiliu Tarau
During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the
division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive
sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to
recognize ...the communist East German state and barred its national
teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin
Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German
teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions
would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In
Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games , Heather L. Dichter
considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic
arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international
sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival
materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international
sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies
surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly
the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she
demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so
intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each
other.
