Tomorrow-Land

Motivated by potentially turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert MosesNew Yorks Master Builderbrought the Worlds Fair to the Big Applefor 1964 and 65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964-65 World s Fair was a Sixties flashpoint in areasfrom politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime.In an epic narrative, the New York Times bestseller Tomorrow-Land shows the astonishing pivots taken by New York City, America, and the world during the Fair. It fetched Disneys empire from California and Michelangelos La Pieta from Europe; and displayed flickers of innovation from Ford, GM, and NASAfrom undersea and outerspace colonies to personal computers. It housed the controversialwork ofWarhol (until Governor Rockefeller had it removed); and lured Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Meanwhile, theFairand its house band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadianssat 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.Worlds 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.