1964 EYES OF THE STORM

Summary

“Millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget.”―Paul McCartney

Taken with a 35mm camera by Paul McCartney, these largely unseen photographs capture the explosive period, from the end of 1963 through early 1964, in which The Beatles became an international sensation and changed the course of music history.

Featuring 275 images from the six cities―Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami―of these legendary months, 1964: Eyes of the Storm also includes:

• A personal foreword in which McCartney recalls the pandemonium of British concert halls, followed by the hysteria that greeted the band on its first American visit
• Candid recollections preceding each city portfolio that form an autobiographical account of the period McCartney remembers as the “Eyes of the Storm,” plus a coda with subsequent events in 1964
• “Beatleland,” an essay by Harvard historian and New Yorker essayist Jill Lepore, describing how The Beatles became the first truly global mass culture phenomenon

Handsomely designed, 1964: Eyes of the Storm creates an intensely dramatic record of The Beatles’ first transatlantic trip, documenting the radical shift in youth culture that crystallized in 1964.

“You could hold your camera up to the world, in 1964. But what madness would you capture, what beauty, what joy, what fury?”―Jill Lepore

About the Author

Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney was raised in the city and educated at the Liverpool Institute. Since writing his first song at fourteen, McCartney has dreamed and dared to be different. He lives in England.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University, where she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, the humanities, and American political history. Her one-semester undergraduate course on the history of the United States features weekly debates in which students use primary sources to argue over competing historical interpretations of turning points in American history. She is the author of The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (winner of the Bancroft Prize), New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), The Secret History of Wonder Woman (winner of the American History Book Prize), and many other titles. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, host of the podcast The Last Archive, and she was named the winner of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in 2021.

Product Description

• With images throughout
• Hardcover: 330 pages
• Publisher: Liveright