Book Owl’s Blog

In April 2008 the peace sign turns 50. Wow, how fast time flies! The symbol was first introduced in a calmer Britain in 1958 to promote nuclear disarmament, and spread fast as times got tense.

National Geographic Books is out with “Peace: The Biography of a Symbol,” by Ken Kolsbun and Michael Sweeney, which traces the simple symbol from its scratched-out origins based on the semaphore flag positions for N and D (nuclear disarmament) to the influence it had, and retains, in social movements. While the book details how the symbol came to be and how it spread, it focuses more on the backdrop of the peace movement generally, from its antecedents in the McCarthyism of the 1950s to nuclear proliferation, Vietnam, Kent State and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to its later promotions of other causes.