We Shook Up the World - by Tracy Daugherty (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A dual biography of George Harrison and Muhammad Ali, two complex icons of the 1960s, culminating in 1974, when both men reemerged in their respective professions. These men displayed that tenacity of the rebellious spirit of a vanishing era that challenged the cultural and political hegemony of the West and American military dominance"---

Book Synopsis

George Harrison met Muhammad Ali in 1964, when both men were on the cusp of worldwide fame. Ten years later, the two men simultaneously staged comebacks, demonstrating just how much they embodied the promises and perils of their era. In doing so, Tracy Daugherty suggests, they revealed the scope and the limits of political courage and commitment to faith in the modern world. We Shook Up the World is the story of these two larger-than-life figures at a momentous time. A unique blend of biography and cultural history, this book goes to the very heart of the zeitgeist that each man inhabited and reinvented in profound and enduring ways.

In 1974, deep in the Pennsylvania woods, thirty-two-year-old Muhammad Ali was seeking renewal, training to regain his heavyweight boxing title in a fight with George Foreman, and exploring questions about his politics, his career, and his life. Meanwhile, George Harrison was thirty-one years old. With the Beatles disbanded, his marriage ending, and the loss of his mother still fresh, he traveled to India to revitalize his faith, energy, and musical spirit, seeking renewal at the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. In contemplating how these two complex figures managed to carry the cultural rebelliousness and spiritual yearning of the 1960s into a new era of cataclysmic political, economic, and social change, We Shook Up the World offers an intimate perspective on two outsize figures in the nation's and the world's cultural history, and a new understanding of their unique contributions to the consciousness of their time and ours.

Review Quotes

"Daugherty plots the spiritual and earthly journeys of two of the most significant icons of the 20th century. Beautifully written, this parallel biography is both perceptive and filled with compassion for its subjects."--Peter Doggett, author of You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup


"Parallel lines aren't supposed to converge, but apparently nobody told Tracy Daugherty that. Improbably, wondrously, he takes the lives of two icons of the twentieth century who couldn't be more different and shows us how they couldn't be more alike. Those of us who lived through the times of Muhammad Ali and George Harrison will find something emotionally powerful and intellectually invigorating on every page."--Stephen Harrigan, author of Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas


"In this masterful and moving tribute, Daugherty shows Muhammad Ali and George Harrison as two men struggling to maintain their spiritual and political convictions amid the kind of fame and fortune very few will ever experience. Their struggles made waves far beyond their respective arenas. Daugherty digs deep. He is at his best in writing about the very human contradictions of these men and their times."--Todd D. Snyder, author of Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype