3 Review(s)

New York City 1964: A Cultural History is, as the title makes clear, a cultural history of New York City in the year 1964. The book focuses on five seminal events that occurred in the city that pivotal year: (1) the ""British Invasion,"" i.e., arrival of The Beatles in New York in February; (2) the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in March; (3) the world's fair that ran in Queens between April and October; (4) the ""race riots"" in Brooklyn and Harlem in July; and (5) the world series in the Bronx between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. Via an exploration of these five events - the biggest (and to some most threatening) thing to happen in pop culture since Elvis's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a shocking crime that reportedly went ignored, the last great world's fair, a key, disturbing moment of the civil rights movement and a legendary contest in sports that represented the end of an era - readers will have a much better understanding and appreciation of the social turbulence taking place in New York City and the United States in the mid-1960s.