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"Margaret Salinger was seven years old in November 1963 and was a third grader in Meridan Elementary School in New Hampshire. The town of Meridan sat in the frosty gulag of the U.S.A. -

Desolate. Endless snow. Many citizens inbred.

After recess on the Friday before Thanksgiving, the school principal, Mrs. Spaulding, entered the classroom and asked Margaret's teacher, Mrs. Beaupre, to come out in the hallway... Mrs. Beaupre returned to the classroom and said, 'Children, President Kennedy has just been shot.'

The classroom erupted with agitated kids. Several boys jumped on their chairs and began applauding and hooting, acting out the views of their New Hampshire parents. In fact, during recess an hour before, six big kids had circled Margaret. Each one took her turn kicking the younger child. As an adult, Margaret would describe these girls as 'some pack of feral Rockettes.' At least once a week, they kicked Margaret during recess. Margaret would one day ask an older boy, 'Why do the big girls hate me?'

'Because your dad is a Communist.'" - Dave Bowman, Big Bang (2019), pp. 11-12.

Dave bowman begins his epic account of American cultural and political history during the 1950s and early 60s by posing answers to a question every almost every American over 60 has encountered during their lives: Where were you when you heard John F. Kennedy had been shot? Bowman emphasizes that everyone has an answer, even if that answer is (like me) "I wasn't born yet." My mother was only four years old the day of the assassination, and my dad had just turned eleven only a few days before. Being such a pivotal moment in the lives of my parents and many of their friends and older relatives, I was eager to read what I thought was an account that delved into the reactions of ordinary people to that tragic day. What I soon discovered was a different, but also intriguing, method of story telling that slowly drew me in and made it difficult to put the book down once I had opened it.

Subtitled "A Nonfiction Novel", Big Bang draws on the best work of authors like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion in the tradition of New Journalism, which presented true events in the style of a fictional narrative. Bowman illuminates such historical figures as Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Jackson Pollock, Pat Nixon, Jackie Kennedy, Ngo Dinh Diem, Howard Hunt, and others, to bring a fresh spin on how the reader views them in the context of American history. The chapters are broken up into bite-sized chunks, usually no more than half a page long, that cut through any metaphors or symbolism and plunge the reader directly into the action.

Overall, this is an excellent book that gets to the heart of both the stifling conservatism of 1950s America, and both the hope and horror that reared their heads throughout the 1960s afterward.