1968 is one of the most storied years in United States' history, an annus horribilis that opened the nation's deepest fault-lines over race, social justice, imperialism, youth rebellion, cultural tension, and a propensity to resort to violence and gun culture. Because of the arresting -- and very visual -- nature of America's crises in 1968, and because of the pervasiveness of U.S. media coverage and dissemination networks, 1968 has been almost universally portrayed as a year in which events in the streets of Saigon, the campuses of Paris, the squares of Prague, and a stadium in Mexico City, were sites of conflict and protest that reflected, but little informed and never determined, events in New Hampshire, Memphis, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

My paper argues that 1968 remains in American historiography and popular memory as a fundamentally and distinctively 'American Melodrama' that as yet stands apart from the growing influence of transnationalism in our understanding of the decade(s) that enveloped it.