Fifty years on, November 22, 1963 continues to resonate. That was when America lost its youthful leader, as well as some of its innocence, and it was also the day on which, over in Britain, a cultural tsunami started to take shape. That Friday saw the release of With the Beatles, the second album from what would soon be called “England’s Phenomenal Pop Combo.” The story of the New Frontier giving way to the British Invasion is thus indelibly etched in public memory. Sadness and loss were eclipsed by the joy and exhilaration surrounding John, Paul, George, and Ringo when they arrived in the States just a few months later. It is no exaggeration to say that, on February 9, 1964, Americans were once again united before their television sets on a scale that hadn’t been experienced since the awful events of the previous autumn—this time, for more positive reasons. The Beatles’ debut on The Ed Sullivan Show was a watershed event that quite literally changed countless lives. Nevertheless, ever since that momentous occasion, conventional wisdom has conflated the two events: American teens surmounted their grief when “these four youngsters from Liverpool” cheered them up with their exuberance and charm. It was as though, without a national tragedy first occurring, the road to the group’s success and acceptance here might not have happened—at least not on the same hysterical scale. In Changin’ Times: 101 Days That Shaped A Generation, pop culture historian Al Sussman challenges this media-fueled mythology, describing how the cultural “British Invasion” had already been well underway before President Kennedy ever went to Texas. Likewise, the notion that the December 1963 success of The Singing Nun’s “Dominique” was due to a mourning country being in no mood for rock ‘n’ roll is belied by The Kingsmen’s inscrutable “Louie Louie” simultaneously dominating local markets. Changin’ Times takes you on a journey back to a very singular moment of transformation in American History—for a generation and also for the world. Al Sussman leaves no cultural touchstone unturned, revealing how Bob Dylan’s assertion that “the times they are a-changin’” was certainly no overstatement.

Changin' Times: 101 Days That Shaped A Generation

Sussman, Al

History

Bemis Publishing Group

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Books by Sussman, Al

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sussman, Al. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Changin' Times: 101 Days That Shaped A Generation