The Last Innocent Year

"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.

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.

What a treat! Memories of the 60's roam randomly through the consciousness of those of us who lived them. But Jon Margolis brings 1964 all together--from civil rights to Vietnam to Timothy Leary. It's a seamless story of a turbulent, exciting time.

Margolis takes the reader on a rich journey of an unforgettable time in our history. He does so with a poet's touch and an historian's critical eye. It was a joy to read his book.