Anniversaries approach, anniversaries arrive, anniversaries align and disperse. What legacies do they leave us, beyond mere memorabilia?

The year 2008 brings not only revisitations of the many historically cathartic events of 1968, but also the 50th anniversary of the public debut of the peace symbol. One artifact of this anniversary which promises to transcend such mere memorabilia is Peace: 50 Years of Protest (Reader's Digest, 2008), written and assembled by Barry Miles, erstwhile chairman of the British-based Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (YCND). The YCND was part of the larger Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which first used the peace symbol on Easter Sunday, 1958, as part of an anti-nuclear protest march in Aldermaston, England. Miles has assembled an amazing 256-page document, which at its core functions as a road map tracing the peace symbol's long journey from its humble semaphoric origins to its ongoing ubiquity in myriad manifestations of popular dissent across the planet.

Not settling for any dry, didactic desert of mere text, Miles has dressed an exhaustive body of research in a drop-dead gorgeous hardcover coffee-table browser's delight, with a stunning collection of black-and-white and full-color photographs demonstrating the peace symbol's astounding reach, from the Aldermaston march to the anti-Vietnam War movement; from the emergence of Greenpeace in the 1970s to the milestone protest against the impending invasion of Iraq that surged across the globe on Feb. 15, 2003; and beyond.

If Peace: 50 Years of Protest should serve not only as mere memorabilia--stunningly as it serves that purpose--but also as a catalyst for further surges of antiwar dissent in coming years, Barry Miles will certainly deserve a hand for a book well-written and well-dressed, as well as a cause well served.