This book has such excellent writing that you have to slow down reading as page after page fly by so quickly. I suppose we are now entering the age which people don't care about what the Beatles did or meant. For that reason this book seems to have been written. A book for the future when all have forgotten what Beatlemania (in America) was and to hear about it from a fan who feels that the four boys from Liverpool have something to say still. The book is divided into 10 short chapters. 9 chapters with the Beatles and the final chapter is a kind of summation of, or better, lessons learned from what occurred to America from the Beatles having arrived. The premise is that in the shock of Kennedy's assassination the Beatles came to lift the hope of America's youth-filled dreams and the promise of a artistic and creative Camelot. The climax of the narrative is the appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The author argues that the Beatles belong most closely to the Baby Boomers or what he calls the Beatles generation. Somehow, in historical providence, the Beatles were given to this select group for the well-being of the nation as a whole. The Beatles epitomize the burning bright light of the Sixties youth, claims the author. The author does not get too bogged down with Beatles controversial minutia, except for a few instances. There are slight weaknesses to the author's aim. Nothing is said of what the Beatles generation themselves had furthered because of the Beatles except for stadium rock concerts, and merchandising. The Beatles themselves could claim a large share in continuing the dominance of the singer-songwriter tradition, socially conscious art forms, and movement away from classical music formats to pop music trends. Also nothing is said about how the US came to find itself dealing with another Presidential assassination. Apparently the verdict is still out on that count. This book covers a lot of time and material adroitly. The final chapter is the weakest as well as the least biographical. The author claims that the older generation misjudged the Sixties with two glaring examples; the Vietnam War and The Beatles. How could the youth of the day trust their elders on the Vietnam War's life and death decisions when they had earlier deemed The Beatles boring or incomprehensible? (p. 173). Not the tightest logical argument for what united the youth of the Sixties but it does address the emotional disinclination of the time to support anything governmental authorities said without question. This book tries to allot an equal share of space to all four separate Beatles even though the Lennon/McCartney founders will always have precedence. That is probably the greatest compliment one can give to any book about The Beatles. George Martin's contributions suffer from the aforesaid but something has to be sidelined in so short a book. No illustrations, Bibliography, Videography, Index. ( )