50 years ago, France was brought to a halt by a student led protest soon to be backed by most trade unions. The mass protests, street fights and nationwide strikes that followed have had a deep impact on the country, and propusled him into modernity.
Revolutions are certainly not scarced in France’s past, May ’68, though, remains as an exception in the history of France. Mostly because the protest concerned all strata of French society: parisians and provincials, students and professors, intellectuals and factory workers.

A sense of excitement over a new found equality and deep camaraderie took hold of the population, cutting across class and education, and spread through the whole country.
Between 10 and 11 million people went on strike. At some point, cars were runnung of gas, because the refineries were closed; the trains and subways stop running. Slogans were mixing political and philosophic claims: poetry was taking over the cities’s walls!
Both the women’s liberation movement and the gay rights movement in France grew out of the intellectual and social revendications of 1968.
The 4 books selected below offer an original take that will help you understand this very unique upheaval, and its longstanding legacy.