1959: The Year Everything Changed - Paperback

by Fred Kaplan (Author)

Acclaimed national security columnist and noted cultural critic Fred Kaplan looks past the 1960s to the year that really changed America

While conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed. Pop culture exploded in upheaval with the rise of artists like Jasper Johns, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, and Miles Davis. Court rulings unshackled previously banned books. Political power broadened with the onset of Civil Rights laws and protests. The sexual and feminist revolutions took their first steps with the birth control pill. America entered the war in Vietnam, and a new style in superpower diplomacy took hold. The invention of the microchip and the Space Race put a new twist on the frontier myth.

• Vividly chronicles 1959 as a vital, overlooked year that set the world as we know it in motion, spearheading immense political, scientific, and cultural change
• Strong critical acclaim: ""Energetic and engaging"" (Washington Post); ""Immensely enjoyable . . . a first-rate book"" (New Yorker); ""Lively and filled with often funny anecdotes"" (Publishers Weekly)
• Draws fascinating parallels between the country in 1959 and today

Drawing fascinating parallels between the country in 1959 and today, Kaplan offers a smart, cogent, and deeply researched take on a vital, overlooked period in American history.

Back Jacket

A Washington Post Best Book of 2009

"Fascinating . . . a cabinet of wonders. . . . Those who love the AMC series Mad Men, set just after the epochal year, will find much to love in Kaplan's book."
--"Los Angeles Times"

"Clever . . . Fun . . . Kaplan makes an intriguing case that 1959 was an authentic annus mirabellis."
--"The Wall Street Journal"

"Enormously engaging. . . . Kaplan is wonderful at chronicling what changed and how."
--"Washington Post"

"Immensely enjoyable reading. . . . A first-rate book."
--George Packer, "The New Yorker"

"This sprawling, holistic joy of a book explores, expands, and provokes reassessment of an entire era--not just a year--in a way that is deeply satisfying and enlightening. Social, political, and historical commentary doesn't get much better than this."
--"Daily Kos"

It was the year of the microchip, the birth-control pill, the space race, and the computer revolution; the rise of Pop art, free jazz, "sick comics," the New Journalism, and indie films; the emergence of Castro, Malcolm X, and personal superpower diplomacy; the beginnings of Motown, Happenings, and the Generation Gap--all bursting against the backdrop of the Cold War, the fallout-shelter craze, and the first American casualties of the war in Vietnam. Drawing on original research, untapped archives, and interviews with major figures of the time, Fred Kaplan pieces together the vast, untold story of a civilization in flux--and paints vivid portraits of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and energy paved the way for the world we know today.

Author Biography

Fred Kaplan is a columnist for Slate and a frequent contributor to the "New York Times," "New York" magazine, and other publications. A former reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner for the "Boston Globe," he is also the author of "Daydream Believers" and coauthor of "The Wizards of Armageddon." He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone.