The Last Innocent Year: America In 1964--the Beginning Of The 'sixties' [Hardcover]

Jon Margolis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 1999

In "The Last Innocent Year," Jon Margolis, a former political reporter for the "Chicago Tribune," captures all the drama and emotion of this historic year, re-creating it from the perspective of the statesmen, celebrities, and ordinary people who made its events come alive.

With the authoritative voice of a veteran journalist, Margolis not only describes the events of that momentous year but places them in a context that is relevant today. He has drawn an unforgettable portrait of a year that changed America forever

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Beatles arrived. Clay beat Liston. LBJ, after inheriting the presidency when JFK was shot, trounced Goldwater. The Civil Rights Act became law. Vietnam simmered, and Timothy Leary was on his psychedelic way. Former Chicago Tribune political correspondent Margolis takes readers on an entertaining flashback to 1964 in a breezily well-written, episodically structured book that reads so much like a good PBS film documentary that readers will be creating soundtracks in their own minds. At the center of Margolis's narrative is LBJ, whose blustery mix of bravado and paranoia mirrors a moment in American history when the nation stood perched between supreme postwar confidence and the identity crisis of the late '60s. As a foil to LBJ, Margolis presents Goldwater, the willing but sometimes less than enthusiastic face of a political movement that wouldn't come to fruition until the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Popular music, sports, the civil rights movement and the growing restlessness of college kids all come under Margolis's gaze. While the book is primarily narrative, Margolis draws broad conclusions when he feels like it (noting, for instance, that 1964 marked the beginning of the triumph of "cultural liberalism" and "political conservatism"). He captures the excitement and conflict of 1964, and he does a particularly good job of outlining how pressure from both the cultural right and left created cracks in the postwar American consensus. Agent, David Black.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Because history involves continual change, all years are transitional; some, however, are more so than others. As this well- written, often colorful work shows, 1964 unquestionably was such a year. ... Margolis uses dozens of short vignettes to provide a month-by-month unfolding of the major American political and cultural developments, from John Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 through the culminating events of the Free Speech Movement uprising at the University of California, Berkeley, in December 1964. His focus rests largely on such society-transforming events as the long struggle over and passage of the first major civil rights act since Reconstruction, the Mississippi ``Freedom Summer'' and the murder of three civil rights workers (Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner) and the transition from American soldiers role as ``advisors'' in Vietnam to active participants, thanks in part to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (September), as well as the presidential campaign contest between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. The year 1964 was also fascinating for both high and popular culture, with plays on Broadway by Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams, the flowering of pop art, and the first American tours of both the Beetles and the Rolling Stones. Margolis demonstrates how major developments and movements feminism and environmentalism, for instanceall were rooted in or around 1964. His book is full of surprising information, e.g., Johnson was seriously considering not running in the weeks before the 1964 Democratic Convention; also, his acceptance speech was written by the novelist John Steinbeck. Like Barbara Tuchman and other deft popular historians, Margolis is a master of the revealing anecdote and pithy summary. This thoroughly enjoyable, informative look at America of 35 years ago will revive memories for aging baby boomers and lead all readers to realize how dramatically the country has changed in a mere generation. (16 pages b&w photos) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (March 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688153232
• ISBN-13: 978-0688153236
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,039,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good addition to the 1960's shelf, October 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Innocent Year: America In 1964--the Beginning Of The 'sixties' (Hardcover)

"The Last Innocent Year" is an interesting and fast-moving account of events in the U.S. in 1964, with a heavy emphasis on national politics, and above all the unexpected presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Margolis' portrait of Johnson's strong and often prickly personality, and his detailed recounting of Johnson's behind-the-scenes jawboning in support of the Civil Rights Act and his own presidential candidacy, often make this book more of a biography than a history. Although Margolis does recount some of the important events of 1964 that took place outside Washington, such as the "Freedom Summer" in Mississippi and the murders that accompanied it, the rise of Barry Goldwater, the Beatles' American debut, and the Free Speech Movement of Berkeley, this book is mostly about presidential politics. The narrative doesn't really support the title's description of 1964 as being "innocent," and it's hard to see why we should consider 1964 to have been "the beginning of the 'Sixties'."

"The Last Innocent Year" is quite similar in its coverage and tone to Jules Witcover's book about 1968, "The Year the Dream Died." Each book is probably the best account yet published of the events leading up to the year's presidential election. However, Margolis' book provides better detail on events beyond national politics, while Witcover's book, a first-person account, is richer in portraiture and analysis. If asked to recommend only one of the two books, I'd give a slight edge to Witcover, in part because he simply had more interesting material to work with. (Now that I think of it, maybe the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace, riots in the cities, the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson in despair over the Vietnam War, and chaos at the Democratic convention in Chicago, all of which featured in the 1968 campaign, do make 1964 look innocent!)

"The Last Innocent Year" contains a lot of mistakes, some of which other reviewers have already noted. Someone needs to sit down and correct the text, or future students and enthusiasts of the Sixties risk being misinformed by a book that in other respects is an excellent addition to the ever-expanding shelf of books about that fascinating decade.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but carelessly edited., June 15, 2000

By 

William R. Oliver (Crittenden, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Innocent Year: America In 1964--the Beginning Of The 'sixties' (Hardcover)

This is a fine read for those of us of a certain age who remember the events but not the background and secrets behind them. I find the title to be quite appropriate, considering what the following years were about to bring us. Unfortunately, two things mar the book. It is only partially documented, so many statements of fact have to be taken on faith. Why there are footnotes for some facts but not others is a mystery to me. The second weakness is the editing (proofreading). Without trying, I have seen several mistakes: A.M. instead of P.M., Governor "John" Rhodes of Ohio (instead of James), and worst of all, he has Barry Goldwater saying "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no VIRTUE" ! Of course, Ole Barry set off an up-roar by saying VICE. These are errors that any competent editor should have caught.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but flawed, much like 1964 itself, August 5, 2000

By 

GePop (Hammond, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Innocent Year: America In 1964--the Beginning Of The 'sixties' (Hardcover)

It's rare to use the word "earnest" in describing a work of history, but it perfectly applies here. Margolis writes at a breakneck pace, which is in keeping with the subject matter. After all, the driving forces of the Year 1964...LBJ, RFK, Barry Goldwater, Civil Rights, Viet Nam, the Beatles...were by no means vehicles of caution! It's full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes...even if that means more than a few errors crop up in the course of reporting.

Some are minor typos (referring to Staunton Military Academy as "Stanton"), others are just plain old confusion (citing "A Hard Day's Night" as the first US hit for the Beatles, when even the most casual of fan probably knows it was "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"). If you can forgive the sloppy editing, this won't bother you much.

I'd be more than a little surprised to find out that Margolis wasn't deeply influenced by Jeffrey Hart's "From This Moment On: America in 1940," which performs much the same task in an even more seminal year. But whereas Hart wrote in the prose style of the magazine feature writer he was, Margolis hammers out his information in the manner of a news wire reporter. It can be a little disconcerting at times, but it also makes this book nearly impossible to put down.