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OK nostalgia but force-fed history.

This is Concept History. The traditional historian researches first, then pronounces conclusions. The concept historian pronounces first, then researches.

The concept here is that 1959 was the year when America pivoted from the shallow, stultified '50s to the dynamic, creative 60s.

The trouble with The Concept Method is that the concept deforms the facts. The concept here is simple-minded at best, silly at worst.

David Halberstam's marvelous "The Fifites" put to rest forever the notion that the 50s were a stagnant time. On the contrary, as Halberstam demonstrated in his captivating style, it was an especially dynamic, innovative era. I could find no reference to Halberstam in Kaplan's sources, an astonishing omission.

It's true that the era was characterized by a certain stylized posturing and peer-enforced conformity. "Decent" people were untroubled by Jim Crow, scandalized by rock and roll, and apoplectic over such then-rebels as Lenny Bruce. We laugh at them now.

But there was more diversity than Kaplan allows. Moreover, the Fifties were positively free-wheeling compared to the stylized posturing and peer-enforced conformity that characterized the 60s. We laugh even harder at them.

I give the book three stars, despite the flawed concept, because it is a diverting piece of nostalgia. Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, C. Wright Mills, Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterley, Mort Sahl, Project Mercury, the Edsel, Chuck Berry, Harry Belafonte, Miles Davis; such deservedly forgotten figures as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course Eisenhower Nixon Kennedy Castro and Khrushchev--we get to revisit them all. You will probably not learn anything new, but re-visitations can have their own value.