One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation Hardcover – 2021 by Patrick Parr

Description

“Masterfully researched and beautifully written, One Week in America is . . . an important piece of history full of larger-than-life characters and unlikely heroes.” –Jonathan Eig, author of Ali: A Life

One Week in America is a day-by-day narrative of the 1968 Notre Dame Sophomore Literary Festival and the national events that grabbed the spotlight–the anti-Vietnam War movement, Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Author Patrick Parr takes readers back to one chaotic week on the Notre Dame campus, when college students, talented authors, and presidential candidates grappled with major events, creating one of the most historic literary festivals of the twentieth century.

The major players in this story are names that just about every household in the United States had heard of before: Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, William F. Buckley Jr., Granville Hicks, Wright Morris.

On one particular week, sixties politics and literature converged amid the chaos of a changing nation.