Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now

This February 7 marks 50 years since The Beatles first came to America. A thousand tributes will tell you what happened. But how and why did it happen the way it did? What was America really like then, culturally and socially, that allowed the group to strike such a deep nerve? And what was it about The Beatles themselves—their backgrounds, their style, and of course their music—that made them so unlike anything Americans had seen before?

Respected political journalist Michael Tomasky explains the group’s impact in the context of the times in this richly detailed, often surprising, I-never-knew-that! account of why The Beatles became the phenomenon they did. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! delivers much more than a blow-by-blow of how the band conquered America. It’s a truly unique take on a well-known story that’s sure to delight existing fans—and to explain to people who weren’t around then but who want to know more precisely why it is that The Beatles still finish number one on all those greatest-ever lists.


Advance Praise:
“Wow. I remember The Beatles' arrival--I was nine--and have spent lots of time thinking and writing about the period, but this book was a revelation. No one has more lucidly and entertainingly distilled the whys and hows and look and feel of the moment the Sixties began.”
--Kurt Andersen, novelist and host, NPR’s Studio 360

“I hadn't been born yet when the Beatles arrived, but Michael Tomasky puts that arrival in context like no book that's come before. Many of the best Beatles books assume the reader was there for the band's arrival. Tomasky puts early Beatlemania in a cultural, historical, and musical context that finally allows younger generations to understand the band's impact at the time--it’s like a scientist finally documenting all the elements that allowed The Big Bang to happen. It's not just a great book about rock’n'roll; it's an essential guide to the Sixties. It's a delight for fans of music and history.”
--John Fugelsang, comic, actor, host of George Harrison: The Last Performance