August Books

I recently finished reading 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlanski, which I highly recommend to everyone. His writing style is engaging and highly readable in a way that drew my interest powerfully from one country to another, touring the world of the year 1968, with fascinating insight:

People born during and and directly after World War II grew up in a world transformed by horror, and this made them see the world in a completely different way. The great lesson of Nazi genocide for the postwar generation was that everyone has an obligation to speak up in the face of wrong and that any excuse for silence will, in the merciless hindsight of history, appear as pathetic and culpable as the Germans in the war crimes trials, pleasing that they were obeying orders (Kulansky, 100).

I found that particular observation stunningly probable as one of the reasons that the previous generation rose up to make a better world with far more energy than mine is inclined to so far.

Next up on my reading list is Jack Kerouac's On the Road ... which I probably should have read years ago, but may be more topical to my life right now.