Bruce's Review 1963 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION by ARIEL LEVE and ROBIN MORGAN

Book Description

Publication Date: November 19, 2013

Ariel Leve and Robin Morgan's oral history 1963: The Year of the Revolution is the first book to recount the kinetic story of the twelve months that witnessed a demographic power shift—the rise of the Youth Quake movement, a cultural transformation through music, fashion, politics, and the arts. Leve and Morgan detail how, for the first time in history, youth became a commercial and cultural force with the power to command the attention of government and religion and shape society.

While the Cold War began to thaw, the race into space heated up, feminism and civil rights percolated in politics, and JFK’s assassination shocked the world, the Beatles and Bob Dylan would emerge as poster boys and the prophet of a revolution that changed the world.

1963: The Year of the Revolution records, documentary-style, the incredible roller-coaster ride of those twelve months, told through the recollections of some of the period’s most influential figures—from Keith Richards to Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon to Graham Nash, Alan Parker to Peter Frampton, Eric Clapton to Gay Talese, Stevie Nicks to Norma Kamali, and many more.

About the Authors


Ariel Leve is an award-winning journalist who has written for such publications as the Guardian, the Financial Times Magazine, the Telegraph, the Observer, and the Sunday Times Magazine, where she was a senior writer on contract from 2003 to 2011. Her first book, It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me, was a collection of her popular "Cassandra" columns, which ran weekly in theSunday Times Magazine for five years. She was short-listed for the British Press Awards three times for Interviewer of the Year (2005 and 2010) and Feature Writer of the Year (2008). She has been Highly Commended twice: Feature Writer (2008) and Interview of the Year (2010).



Robin Morgan has been an award-winning, London-based investigative journalist, foreign correspondent, and author for nearly forty years on assignments as diverse as the Middle East, Irangate, terrorism, and the fall of communism. He was Britain's Campaigning Journalist of the Year in 1982 and commended again in 1983. He headed up the Insight investigations team of the LondonSunday Times before becoming the longest-serving editor in chief of the Sunday Times Magazine. During his eighteen years at the helm, the magazine garnered scores of national and international writing, editing, and photographic awards. He has contributed to GQ, Esquire, and Departures magazine, among others, and has coauthored or edited more than a dozen books.

SOURCE:  PUBLISHER

BRUCE'S THOUGHTS: 4 stars

1963 The Year of the Revolution by Ariel Leve and Robin Morgan uses the premise that 1963 was the year that society, culture and world events pivoted around post war England. It contains interviews with icons of the English musical scene to give subtext to the year as to relate their importance to 1963. In spite of its pretentiousness (in my opinion) the interviews give a personal view of each ones recollections of the life and times of the era and not how important it was. There was an inclusion of Americans in the book, but not enough to make me feel that this was the predominant English point of view. I grew up in the 60's and must have missed the world pivoting. Maybe the seismic shift had subsided by the time it got to Southern California.