The Last Innocent Year

Book excerpt: The year 1964 marked a change in American history: John Kennedy was dead, and in the aftermath of his assassination, the country was trying to figure out what to do with itself. The Warren Commission was busily sifting evidence, Jackie Kennedy was fast on her way to becoming an icon of dignified widowhood, and Lyndon Johnson was tearing down Camelot to build the Great Society. Young men started burning draft cards, rioting blacks burned whole neighborhoods, women began to wonder if the male sex was their oppressor, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (which escalated the war in Vietnam), and three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. In The Last Innocent Year, Jon Margolis, a former political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, captures all the drama and emotion of this historic year, re-creating it from the perspective of the statesmen, celebrities, and ordinary people who made its events come alive.