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Under Bush’s leadership, America made significant strides in
technology and weapons of war, and Bush himself envisioned a
future with a device we’d recognize as a computer. As for
long-range rocketry, though, he thought it “would not be
technically feasible.”
Bush was still alive on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 landed on
the moon.
A little more than two weeks later, America would have what Lebo
calls “One Week of the Darkest and the Brightest.”
For years, the counter-culture had been gaining strength and
society had rapidly changed, thanks to “Americans under 25
years old.” Long hair replaced crew cuts; “suits and
wingtips were replaced by jeans and sandals”; and young
people, unhappy with their parents’ lifestyles, adapted
lifestyles of their own making.
It was a situation that Charles Manson took full advantage of, as
he gathered followers who ultimately did his bidding by
murdering seven people in the Los Angeles area on the nights
of August 8-9 and 10.
Hollywood was terrified, as were most older Americans but the
country’s youth likely noted the murders and moved on,
literally: 500,000 of them were headed for a farm in upstate
New York, where a three-day concert was being held August
15-17, beginning with a prayer by Sri Swami Satchidananda
and ending with a blurry-eyed Jimi Hendrix on guitar.
Little did those concert-goers know that, six weeks later,
something would happen that’d someday allow music to be
portable: a grad student at UCLA noted that his university’s
computer connected with a staff member’s computer.
It was, as Lebo says, “the birth of the Internet….”
You know how it goes: one thing leads to another. In 100 Days,
author Harlan Lebo shows that phenomenon in history, by
laying out a short timeline of the summer of ’69 – starting
in 1941.
Going that far back is necessary to completely understand the
significance of the first event, the start of a summer
that’s been the subject of a lot of books this year. What
sets this apart from others, however, is that Lebo looks
closer at then-major names and at the everyman players, both
who had pinky-fingers on what happened. These are the people
who were almost headline-makers, who had remarkable
front-row seats before slipping back into the crowd.
History doesn’t always recall those bit-players; Lebo does, and
that’s where readers will find the best parts of 100 Days.
There’s why you’ll want to check this book on your list.
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