Tomorrow-Land: The 1964 - 65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HFYJQ4A | Format: PDF
Tomorrow-Land: The 1964 - 65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America Description
Motivated by the idea of turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert Moses - New York's "master builder" - brought the World's Fair to the Big Apple for 1964 and '65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964/65 World's Fair was a sixties flash point in areas from politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime.
In an epic narrative, Tomorrow-Land shows the astonishing pivots taken by New York City, America, and the world during the fair. It fetched Disney's empire from California and Michelangelo's La Piet? from Europe and displayed flickers of innovation from Ford, GM, and NASA - from undersea and outer-space colonies to personal computers. It housed the controversial work of Warhol(until Governor Rockefeller had it removed) and lured Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Meanwhile, the fair - and its house band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians - sat in the musical shadows of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who changed rock and roll right there in Queens. And as southern civil rights efforts turned deadly, and violent protests also occurred in and around the fair, Harlem-based Malcolm X predicted a frightening future of inner-city racial conflict.
World's Fairs have always been collisions of eras, cultures, nations, technologies, ideas, and art. But the trippy, turbulent, Technicolor, Disney, corporate, and often misguided 1964/65 fair was truly exceptional.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 21 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: January 7, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HFYJQ4A
It's only January, 2014, and there's already an avalanche of 50th anniversary books about 1964. How to choose? I like to opt for accounts with an unusual perspective. Tomorrow-Land looks at 1964-65 by focusing on the World's Fair in New York. Author Joseph Tirella centers on the Fair and its planner, Robert Moses, while widening the scope to include the atmosphere beyond the Flushing Meadows Fairgrounds to include music, art, and the Civil Rights Movement.
While the Fair took shape and the planning had its ups and downs, the Civil Rights movement gained steam and the reaction, especially in the South, turned violent. The violence spread to other parts of the country, right up to the gates of the Fair. At the same time, The Beatles had captivated America and Bob Dylan was taking music in a different direction. And Lenny Bruce, Andy Warhol, Ken Kesey, and Alan Ginsburg, among others were all riding a roller coaster of popular culture changes. Meanwhile, Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson were duking it out to become President. Johnson won the battle, and risked his political career on the Civil Rights Act. But his legacy would be the disastrous escalation of American involvement in Vietnam.
The story of Robert Moses, the Fair's planner and architect, is a fascinating one, and new to me. I want to find out more about this man. Tirella calls him the "master builder," possibly because no other title fits. He wasn't a city planner or an architect or a politician or an elected official. He was apparently more powerful than the mayor and controlled huge amounts of city money. He had a number of bridges and roads built, and created a number of city parks. New York was shaped by him in the middle of the 20th century.
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