1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred KaplanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a great book, and the works of Kaplan are now on my must-read list.
From my reading, it seems the 19th Century centered around roughly Darwin's 1859 The Origin of Species, saw a sociological upheaval around the confrontation of society with evolution and The Industrial Revolution and more. The results ranged from Social Darwinism to Gothic literature having been born with Frankenstein saw its most creative period, ranging from Poe to the Brontë sisters (Wuthering Heights, 1847) and Bram Stoker's Dracula(1897).
Looking a century later, Kaplan pinpoints a year of birth control, free jazz, Cassavetes, the Beats, Normal Mailer, abstract expressionists, and more as the seminal year that is the roots of Civil Rights, the tumultuous '60s, and more.
This is an enlightening microhistory on Western civilization.
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