About the Author

SHAWN LEVY is the author of six previous books, including the New York Timesbestsellers Rat Pack Confidential and Paul Newman: A Life.  He served as film critic of The Oregonian from 1997 to 2012 and is a former senior editor ofAmerican Film and a former associate editor of Box Office. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Independent, Film Comment, Movieline, and Sight and Sound, among many other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Reviews

"An invigorating book...packed with can't-miss material."

"Finally somebody besides Dr. Evil has invented a time machine to take us back to the '60s."

Praise for Ready, Steady, Go!: "Nimble and exciting...Levy's writing is more smashing than an Austin Powers movie."

Levy (King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis), a film critic at the Oregonian who has contributed to other major newspapers, here delivers an intriguing look at pop culture. Levy explores the rise of London from drab postwar center to the hippest city in the world by the 1960s. He writes from the perspective of the people who brought it to prominence: fashion photographer David Bailey and his wife, model Jean Shrimpton; the Beatles, provincial rockers turned clean-cut popsters; the Rolling Stones, or "anti-Beatles," middle-class youth turned blue collar terrors; pop singer/model Marianne Faithfull; hair stylist and former Israeli soldier Vidal Sassoon; actors Terrence Stamp and Michael Caine; and a constellation of other stars. Levy traces the growth of the London scene from a small group of dissolute aristocrats and tough East Enders to its fall as a victim of its own success and the emerging psychedelic movement imported from the United States. Although the treatment is popular rather than scholarly, both public and academic libraries will find the book useful to patrons wanting to learn more about 1960s culture, as well as those who want to know why their parents and grandparents laugh so hard at the "Austin Powers" films. Mark Bay, Cumberland Coll. Lib., Williamsburg, KY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

"An invigorating book...packed with can't-miss material."
"Finally somebody besides Dr. Evil has invented a time machine to take us back to the '60s."
Praise for Ready, Steady, Go!: "Nimble and exciting...Levy's writing is more smashing than an Austin Powers movie."