1959: The Year Everything Changed [Hardcover]

Fred Kaplan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0470387815 | ISBN-13: 978-0470387818 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Slate columnist Kaplan takes a contrarian view to the common wisdom that the '60s were the source of the cultural shift from pre-WWII traditions to the individualistic, question-authority world of today. In Kaplan's view, the watershed year in this transformation is 1959. He delves into that year's cultural and political scene, citing Miles Davis and his revolutionary album Kind of Blue; William Burroughs and his equally revolutionary novel, Naked Lunch; and the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright's radically designed Guggenheim Museum in New York City as examples of fundamental breaks with past conventions. Kaplan's case is cemented by three 1959 events that he convincingly argues were catalysts for paradigm changes in relationships between men and women (the pharmaceutical company Searle sought FDA approval for the birth control pill), in how citizens view their government (the first American soldiers were killed in Vietnam) and in communications and information transfer (the microchip was introduced to the world). Kaplan doesn't quite convince that 1959 was the year when the shockwaves of the new ripped the seams of daily life, but his writing is lively and filled with often funny anecdotes as he examines some key elements in the transition from the mid to late 20th century. 16 b&w photos. (July)
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Review

"Immensely enjoyable reading... a first-rate book… You'd be amazed how much stuff was going on in the unpromising year 1959, and how it all comes under the heading of breaking the chains of the old and embracing the new... [Kaplan]'s a sort of wonky hipster, a type that subsumes and coalesces almost all of the characters -- physicists, poets, jazz musicians, astronomers -- who set America on fire at the end of the Eisenhower decade, and who people 1959, Kaplan's new book, which puts all of his passions between hard covers." (The New Yorker)

"Kaplan's premise is certainly a good one. He's arguing that the real fulcrum of the 20th century and beyond is not -- as many argue -- the 1960s, but the unsung '50s. 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, July 19, 2009)

“Kaplan makes an intriguing case that 1959 was an authentic annus mirabellis.” (Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2009)

"Where he really shines is in his ability to capture longer-term trends in the snapshot of the year.... In Kaplan's careful interpretation of the year, 1959--even aside from its headline scientific and cultural milestones--was a simmering cauldron of innovation and change, with superficial conformity and false shallows hiding the depths beneath." (DailyKos)

“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.” (dailykos.com, June 7, 2009)

Slate columnist Kaplan takes a contrarian view to the common wisdom that the '60s were the source of the cultural shift from pre-WWII traditions to the individualistic, question-authority world of today. In Kaplan's view, the watershed year in this transformation is 1959. He delves into that year's cultural and political scene, citing Miles Davis and his revolutionary album Kind of Blue; William Burroughs and his equally revolutionary novel, Naked Lunch; and the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright's radically designed Guggenheim Museum in New York City as examples of fundamental breaks with past conventions. Kaplan's case is cemented by three 1959 events that he convincingly argues were catalysts for paradigm changes in relationships between men and women (the pharmaceutical company Searle sought FDA approval for the birth control pill), in how citizens view their government (the first American soldiers were killed in Vietnam) and in communications and information transfer (the microchip was introduced to the world). Kaplan doesn't quite convince that 1959 was “the year when the shockwaves of the new ripped the seams of daily life,” but his writing is lively and filled with often funny anecdotes as he examines some key elements in the transition from the mid to late 20th century. 16 b&w photos. (July) (Publishers Weekly, May 4, 2009)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470387815
• ISBN-13: 978-0470387818
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #351,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It was a very good year July 29, 2009

By Chris Swanson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

It's pretentious to have a subtitle to this book that says "The Year Everything Changed". It's silly, too. Every instant of every second changes the universe in ways both subtle and major.

But it's hard to deny that 1959 was a year where there were a lot of major changes; where a lot of things that had been brewing for years, decades and even centuries finally came to a head, laid the ground for the 1960's and helped to shape this country into something new and exciting.

Kaplan does an excellent job of bringing home to the reader exactly what those changes were, what led to them and why they mattered. I knew next to nothing about the importance of jazz (largely because I don't care for it), but after reading this book's sections on jazz, I understand what it's important. The same goes for the background in our involvement in Vietnam, the development of our nuclear policy and the importance of the various great writers of the so-called "beat" generation.

The book is well-written and entertaining, and I found that I had a tough time putting it down so that I could sleep; something rare for me with non-fiction. It covers such a wealth of diverse topics that if, like me, you don't care for the jazz section, there's another section before it you might like and more to come after that you might be more interested in.

"1959: The Year Everything Changed" is a good, intelligent book and well worth your time and trouble to pick up.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A good book, better balance and it could have been great. September 19, 2009

By Shawn S. Sullivan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

1959 was a pivotal year. And Fred Kaplan surely makes a case on the cultural revolution that really precipitated the changes of the 60s and beyond. All students of 20th Century American Studies should read this volume. That said, Kaplan, who is a jazz blogger, does a terrific job of showing its influence on rock and roll, racial relations and morphing from the accepted forms of art to the less accepted and outside the box concepts of "art". What almost ruins this book is his seeming endless desire to demonstrate his knowledge of musical theory and rhythms that have nothing to do with his premise - both state and demonstrated.

It becomes absurd at points. With John Coltrane "piling chords on top of chords within chords, pushing the harmonic complexity beyond their limit (sic)". The next paragraph leaves an astute reader apoplectic. "As the Black Power movement took off in the sixties, several black musicians took the examples of Coleman, Coltrane . . . as a license to play free as a POLITICAL statement - breaking down chords and rhythms as as symbol for breaking down white authority and power. . . ". While both happened, antecedent an precedent and a casual relationship are highly questionable. It is academic reaching by a terrific writer but one who I would question the credentials, no less research, to make such bold claims. Perhaps they are true. But it surely isn't demonstrated in this writing.

If you are not interested in Jazz or Beat writers, this is not your book, unless you feel the need to better understand the cultural changes of the beginning of the later part of the 20th Century. Perhaps a different name for this book would help. And more on other events, cultural included, than his near obsession with the Beats and the Jazz musicians.... Overall, fairly disjointed and off-premise writing. Read more ›

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "America is having a nervous breakdown." - Allen Ginsberg, 1959 August 2, 2009

By Found Highways VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Which came first, the Sputnik or the beatnik? What's the connection between Motown Records and the microchip? Were Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra really going to play Fidel and Raul Castro in a movie together? (The horror. The horror.) Why do Mort Sahl's jokes from the late fifties sound like they could have been written yesterday? What did Norman Mailer mean by calling himself a "White Negro" and was he being as pretentious as it sounds?

In 1959: The Year Everything Changed, Fred Kaplan answers these questions and examines many more artistic, scientific, and social issues that he thinks came to a head in that year, a turning point for the generation that came back from World World II and their young children.

According to Norman Mailer the "psychic horror" caused by "the concentration camps and the atom bomb" gave birth to the White Negro, the hipster, "the American existentialist." Faced with universal death the only answer was "to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots . . ."

It wasn't just artists who saw themselves as hipsters in revolt. Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society, described sociologist C. Wright Mills as combining "the rebel life of James Dean and the moral position of Albert Camus."

Politicians became cool for the first time, too. Mailer saw John F. Kennedy as "The Hipster as Presidential Candidate."

Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl," Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, physicist Herman Kahn's book on nuclear warfare strategy Thinking about the Unthinkable, Miles Davis's jazz album Kind of Blue, John Howard Griffin's cross-racial odyssey Black Like Me, and Lenny Bruce's "sick" comedy were all expressions of the "distinctive swoon" of this age....

For Kaplan much of the sense of dislocation came from "the twin prospects of infinite expansion and total destruction." Hope and fear were engendered by every possibility, especially in science.

Satellites and rockets could increase knowledge of the universe, but they were also weapons aimed at the planet from which they were launched.

The International Geophysical Year (July 1957-December 1958) was a peaceful international scientific project, and President Eisenhower used it launch the Explorer satellite. The Explorer failed, but the Soviets responded with Sputnik, then Lunik, which inspired the American space program. (Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age by Matthew Brzezinski is an interesting scientific and social history on the Space Race.)

What John F. Kennedy called "unknown opportunities and peril" meant that nothing was impossible. Fifty years later we feel different perils, but I'm not sure we believe in new opportunities any more. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars OK nostalgia but force-fed history June 5, 2010

By Jeff Kelleher VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This is Concept History. The traditional historian researches first, then pronounces conclusions. The concept historian pronounces first, then researches.

The concept here is that 1959 was the year when America pivoted from the shallow, stultified '50s to the dynamic, creative 60s.

The trouble with The Concept Method is that the concept deforms the facts. The concept here is simple-minded at best, silly at worst.

David Halberstam's marvelous "The Fifites" put to rest forever the notion that the 50s were a stagnant time. On the contrary, as Halberstam demonstrated in his captivating style, it was an especially dynamic, innovative era. I could find no reference to Halberstam in Kaplan's sources, an astonishing omission.

It's true that the era was characterized by a certain stylized posturing and peer-enforced conformity. "Decent" people were untroubled by Jim Crow, scandalized by rock and roll, and apoplectic over such then-rebels as Lenny Bruce. We laugh at them now.

But there was more diversity than Kaplan allows. Moreover, the Fifties were positively free-wheeling compared to the stylized posturing and peer-enforced conformity that characterized the 60s. We laugh even harder at them.

I give the book three stars, despite the flawed concept, because it is a diverting piece of nostalgia. Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, C. Wright Mills, Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterley, Mort Sahl, Project Mercury, the Edsel, Chuck Berry, Harry Belafonte, Miles Davis; such deservedly forgotten figures as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course Eisenhower Nixon Kennedy Castro and Khrushchev--we get to revisit them all. You will probably not learn anything new, but re-visitations can have their own value.