1959

Fred Kaplan

Description

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.
Timeline.

1 Breaking the Chains.

2 A Visitor from the East.

3 The Philosopher of Hip.

4 Generations Howling.

5 The Cosmonaut of Inner Space.

6 The End of Obscenity.

7 Sickniks.

8 Thinking about the Unthinkable.

9 The Race for Space.

10 Toppling the Tyranny of Numbers.

11 The Assault on the Chord.

12 Revolutionary Euphoria.

13 Breaking the Logjam, Hitting the Wall.

14 The Frontier’s Dark Side.

15 The New Language of Diplomacy.

16 Sparking the Powder Keg.

17 Civilizations in the Stars.

18 A Great Upward Swoop of Movement.

19 Blurring Art and Life.

20 Seeing the Invisible.

21 The Off-Hollywood Movie.

22 The Shape of Jazz to Come.

23 Dancing in the Streets.

24 Andromeda Freed from Her Chains.

25 New Frontiers.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Credits.

Index.

Sujets

• 20th Century
• Modern
• Histoire
• Años 50
• History of the United States
• 50s
• History
• 1963

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470730270
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Praise
Timeline
 
Chapter 1 - Breaking the Chains
Chapter 2 - A Visitor from the East
Chapter 3 - The Philosopher of Hip
Chapter 4 - Generations Howling
Chapter 5 - The Cosmonaut of Inner Space
Chapter 6 - The End of Obscenity
Chapter 7 - Sickniks
Chapter 8 - Thinking about the Unthinkable
Chapter 9 - The Race for Space
Chapter 10 - Toppling the Tyranny of Numbers
Chapter 11 - The Assault on the Chord
Chapter 12 - Revolutionary Euphoria
Chapter 13 - Breaking the Logjam, Hitting the Wall
Chapter 14 - The Frontier’s Dark Side
Chapter 15 - The New Language of Diplomacy
Chapter 16 - Sparking the Powder Keg
Chapter 17 - Civilizations in the Stars
Chapter 18 - A Great Upward Swoop of Movement
Chapter 19 - Blurring Art and Life
Chapter 20 - Seeing the Invisible
Chapter 21 - The Off-Hollywood Movie
Chapter 22 - The Shape of Jazz to Come
Chapter 23 - Dancing in the Streets
Chapter 24 - Andromeda Freed from Her Chains
Chapter 25 - New Frontiers
 
Acknowledgements
Notes
Credits
Index
Books by Fred Kaplan
1959: The Year Everything Changed Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power The Wizards of Armageddon

Copyright © 2009 by Fred Kaplan. All rights reserved
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
 
Credits appear on page 309 and constitute an extension of this copyright page.
 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
 
Kaplan, Fred M.
1959 : the year everything changed / Fred Kaplan. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-0-470-73027-0
1. History, Modern—1945-1989. 2. Civilization, Modern—1950- I. Title. II. Title: Nineteen fifty nine.
D842.5.K35 2009
909.82’5—dc22
2008045529
For Maxine & Sophie, through the next fifty years And, as always, for Brooke
“I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goes thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
—Jack Kerouac

  I tell you, the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not.
—John F. Kennedy

  What we in hindsight call change is usually the unexpected swelling of a minor content as it imperceptibly becomes a major one and alters the prevailing mood.
—Morris Dickstein
Timeline
January 1 Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries take power in Cuba.
January 2 Soviets’ Lunik 1 spacecraft breaks free of Earth’s gravitational pull.
January 4 Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan visits the United States.
January 9 Federal judge orders Atlanta to integrate its buses and trolleys.
January 10 Hayden Planetarium in New York reopens with a show on space exploration called “The Sky Is the New Frontier.”
January 12 Berry Gordy borrows $800 from his family to buy a studio for his new record company, Motown.
January 19 Federal judge orders Virginia to desegregate its schools.
February 5 Allen Ginsberg returns to Columbia University to give a poetry reading to a packed auditorium.
February 13 U.S. Air Force generals coin the word “aerospace” to claim military control of outer space in addition to the skies.
March 1 Martin Luther King Jr. meets with Vinoba Bhave, the Gandhian “walking saint,” at the ashram in Ahmedabad, India.
March 2 Miles Davis begins to record Kind of Blue.
March 3 U.S. Pioneer IV spacecraft matches the feat of Lunik 1.
March 12 C. Wright Mills publishes “Culture and Politics: The 4th Epoch,” inspiring an American New Left.
March 13 Herman Kahn begins his marathon lecture series on thermonuclear war.
March 17 Excerpt of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch appears in Big Table magazine.
March 18 U.S. Postmaster General seizes copies of Big Table for violating obscenity laws.
March 18 Barney Rosset of Grove Press announces he will publish the illegal, uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover .
March 24 Texas Instruments announces the invention of the integrated circuit, or microchip.
April 5 3rd International Auto Show introduces the Datsun and the Toyota.
April 9 “Sick comic” Lenny Bruce appears on national television.
April 15 Fidel Castro visits the United States.
April 28 Grove Press sues U.S. Post Office for confiscating copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
May 4 John Coltrane records Giant Steps.
May 7 Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus is published.
May 22 Ornette Coleman records The Shape of Jazz to Come.
June 8 U.S. Navy and Post Office launch “missile mail” experiment.
June 18 Federal court overturns Arkansas school-segregation law.
June 25 Dave Brubeck starts to record Time Out.
June 29 U.S. Supreme Court overturns the banning of a French film of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
July 8 First two U.S. soldiers are killed in South Vietnam.
July 12 Malcolm X travels to the Middle East.
July 13 Mike Wallace’s TV documentary The Hate That Hate Produced , about Malcolm X and the Black Muslims, is aired nationwide.
July 21 Grove Press wins court victory and right to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
July 23 G. D. Searle applies for FDA approval of the birth control pill.
July 24 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon hold “kitchen debate” in Moscow.
September 9 U.S. Civil Rights Commission releases its first report detailing racial discrimination in America.
September 15 Khrushchev visits the United States.
September 19 Philip Morrison and Giuseppi Cocconi’s “Searching for Interstellar Communication” is published in Nature.
October 4 Allan Kaprow stages the first Happening.
October 5 IBM 1401, first practical business computer, goes on sale.
October 21 Guggenheim Museum, first U.S. art museum dedicated to non-objective art, opens.
October 30 Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself is published.
November 4 John Howard Griffin begins his trip to the Deep South disguised as a black man, for his book Black Like Me .
November 11 John Cassavetes’ film Shadows opens.
November 16 François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows opens in New York.
November 17 The Ornette Coleman Quartet debuts at the Five Spot.
November 19 Ford Motor Company shuts down production of the Edsel.
December 16 Sixteen Americans , the first museum show featuring Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, opens at the Museum of Modern Art.
December 31 John F. Kennedy prepares to announce that he will run for president in the 1960 election.
1
Breaking the Chains
On January 2, 1959, a Soviet rocket carrying the Lunik I space capsule—also known as Mechta , “the dream”—blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, accelerated to twenty-five thousand miles per hour (the magical speed known as “escape velocity”), sailed past the moon, and pushed free of Earth’s orbit, becoming the first man-made object to revolve around the sun among the celestial bodies. The next issue of Time magazine hailed the feat as “a turning point in the multibillion-year history of the solar system,” for “one of the sun’s planets had at last evolved a living creature that could break the chains of its gravitational field.”
The flight of the Lunik set off a year when chains of all sorts were broken with verve and apprehension—not just in the cosmos, but in politics, society, culture, science, and sex. A feeling took hold that the breakdown of barriers in space, speed, and time made other barriers ripe for transgressing.
1959 was the year when the shockwaves of the new ripped the seams of daily life, when humanity stepped into the cosmos and also commandeered the conception of human life, when the world shrank but the knowledge needed to thrive in it expanded exponentially, when outsiders became insiders, when categories were crossed and taboos were trampled, when everything was changing and everyone knew it—when the world as we now know it began to take form.
Just two months before Lunik, “the jet age” roared into being, when a brand-new Boeing 707,