Power and the Idealists

"In January 2001, Stern magazine in Germany published a series of shocking photographs of one of Europe's leading politicians - Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister in that year. The photos showed Fischer as a young bully at a left-wing riot in 1973, beating up a policeman. In the European press, and eventually in the American press, the photos set off a massive accusation against the young radicals of the 1960s and their influence on modern life - a controversy that came to be known as "the trial of the Generation of 1968."" "Paul Berman tells the story of this scandal. And he answers the massive accusation by recounting the political evolution of several people from that generation - Fischer himself; Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of the French student uprising of 1968; Dr. Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Doctors Without Borders; and others around the world."--Jacket.