On February 9, 1964, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the rock music and pop culture scene changed forever. Unprecedented international fame made them both popular and prisoners. Their many contributions and innovations to the music world are presented. Discography, Further Reading, Sources.

a book about the beatles and how they changed the music scene which rippled to other areas of change. Told through text and pictures

Despite some minor factual errors and oversights, Marty Sanders does a fine job chronicling the immense influence The Beatles had upon music and popular culture. ( )

This book was immensely enjoyable. With all I know about The Beatles and their coming to America, I still learned a great deal. Sandler wastes no time bringing you into The Beatles story, dropping right into he crowds awaiting their arrival for the Ed Sullivan Show appearance. Grabbing the reader's attention like this, and drawing them into the story, without a long introduction works very well for a high energy topic, such as the Fab Four. After this introduction, we go backwards, tot he beginning of the Beatles, to the band they were before. I had know that most of them were in a band together, and that John Lennon had been part of a band called The Quarrymen before. It was very interesting to get a much more detailed background on this than I had ever had before.
As I read, I noticed only one attributed quote from a source book, and this started to bother me. However, I started to realize that this was just the style of the book. It is a more narrative and story driven piece. The book's reference page is small, written in a conversational manner. There is a decent sized list of further reading, annotated for what was used as reference in the book, and which sources are of special interest to young readers. The latter annotation is of most interest to me. The topic of The Beatles is something that I would never associate with young readers, and to find and note sources specially designed for this is a wonderful sight. Looking further into the accuracy of the book, I researched the author. Sandler is a prolific author of books of all types, over many years. Some of the text I had read had lead me to believe he would be a younger author, having not seen these events first hand. Sandler lived this part of history, seeing the headlines, hearing the radio news and music, and seeing the Ed Sullivan Show for himself. Many of my concerns with sourcing went away when I realized that much of this would be reflection on his experiences.

One of the things that concerned me was in the first chapter, referencing how many can remember where they were when The Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. Specifically, it mentions the moon landing, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the terrorist attacks on September 11. This last one felt a stretch to try and bring things more moderns. It felt anachronistic. Another anachronism that stuck out to me as an image of Michael Bay filming Transformers. In a section about The Beatles changing film-making, a random photo of a modern director that is often panned by critics sits in stark contrast to the amazing photos throughout the book.

The visual design of this book is great. The colors really hit a 1960's mod style, appropriate for the colorful world of The Beatles music. The extensive use of photographs, especially ones I've never seen before. The layout was well done. The sidebars were mostly on separate pages, with distinct coloring differences to mark them as extra. These sidebars contained some really fun and amusing facts about the Fab Four. My only problem with the visual styling of the book was that when a red background was used for a photo caption, it was hard to read the small black text on it. The book has an extensive index, photo credits page, a well organized table of contents, and a beautifully put together references and further reading page. As mentioned before, the further reading has annotations to denote books that are well suited to younger readers. I also like that the text and digital sources for easy reference.

Over all, I would suggest this book for younger readers studying music, or even history during the 1960's. Even adult fans of The Beatles would enjoy it as I did. ( )

Very interesting and concise read about the Beatles and how they greatly influenced culture around the world. It goes beyond their music to include fashion, art, philosophy and politics. ( )