1959 : The Year Everything Changed

by Kaplan, Fred

• ISBN13: 9780470387818
• ISBN10: 0470387815
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-06-15
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Advance Praise for Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed" An engrossing story about not just where the '60s came from but the birth of the future. Kaplan does a masterful job of weaving together the strands - in politics, society, culture, and science - that have brought us to the postmodern age." - Jonathan Alter, author of The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope"It turns out there's only one degree of separation between Miles Davis, the brilliant jazz innovator, and Herman Kahn, the Strangelovian nuclear-war theorist-and his name is Fred Kaplan. No one else could throw this fabulous cocktail party of a popular history, teeming with defiant hipsters, visionary inventors, artistic rulebreakers, and troublemakers of all kinds." - Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, the New Yorker "1959 is a riveting account of the year our modern age began. Everything did change, and you'll be amazed by how much was going on, and how much it has affected the way you live your life now." -Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row, Dreamland, and Paradise Alley "Take a ride on the New Frontier with Fred Kaplan, your insightful (and hip) guide to the space race, thermonuclear war, the civil rights movement, the 'sick comics,' the Beats, and the beginnings of the Vietnam War, all to a soundtrack by Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Miles, and Motown." -Donald Fagen, cofounder, Steely Dan

Author Biography

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate, contributes frequently to the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section, and blogs about jazz for Stereophile. A Pulitzer Prize winning former Boston Globe reporter who covered the Pentagon and post-Soviet Moscow, he has also written for the New Yorker, New York, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other publications. He is the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, also available from Wiley. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone.

http://www.1959thebook.com

Table of Contents

Timeline	p. xi
Breaking the Chains	p. 1
A Visitor from the East	p. 8
The Philosopher of Hip	p. 15
Generations Howling	p. 26
The Cosmonaut of Inner Space	p. 39
The End of Obscenity	p. 45
Sickniks	p. 55
Thinking about the Unthinkable	p. 63
The Race for Space	p. 72
Toppling the Tyranny of Numbers	p. 76
The Assault on the Chord	p. 84
Revolutionary Euphoria	p. 94
Breaking the Logjam, Hitting the Wall	p. 105
The Frontier's Dark Side	p. 116
The New Language of Diplomacy	p. 125
Sparking the Powder Keg	p. 133
Civilizations in the Stars	p. 149
A Great Upward Swoop of Movement	p. 157
Blurring Art and Life	p. 169
Seeing the Invisible	p. 181
The Off-Hollywood Movie	p. 188
The Shape of Jazz to Come	p. 198
Dancing in the Streets	p. 212
Andromeda Freed from Her Chains	p. 221
New Frontiers	p. 233
Acknowledgments	p. 245
Notes	p. 249
Credits	p. 309
Index	p. 311
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