Tomorrow-land: the 1964-65 World's Fair and the transformation of America

Motivated by potentially turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert Moses--New York's & quot;Master Builder & quot;--brought the World & rsquo;s Fair to the Big Apple for 1964 and & rsquo;65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964-65 World & rsquo;s Fair was a Sixties flashpoint in areas from politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime. In an epic narrative, Tomorrow-Land shows the astonishing pivots taken by New York City, America, and the world during the Fair. It fetched Disney & rsquo;s empire from California and Michelangelo & rsquo;s La Pieta from Europe; and displayed flickers of innovation from Ford, GM, and NASA--from undersea and outerspace colonies to personal computers. It housed the controversial work of Warhol (until Governor Rockefeller had it removed); and lured Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Meanwhile, the Fair--and its house band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians--sat in the musical shadows of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who changed rock-and-roll right there in Queens. And as Southern civil rights efforts turned deadly, and violent protests also occurred in and around the Fair, Harlem-based Malcolm X predicted a frightening future of inner-city racial conflict. World & rsquo;s Fairs have always been collisions of eras, cultures, nations, technologies, ideas, and art. But the trippy, turbulent, Technicolor, Disney, corporate, and often misguided 1964-65 Fair was truly exceptional.;Part One. The Greatest Single Event in History -- Part Two. Something New -- Part Three. Bringing It All Back Home -- Epilogue: Tomorrow Never Knows.