Books with author Evan Hunter

The author of the book and the producer of the movie that followed it almost certainly did not intend the book would have the result it produced. It was intended as social commentary on the degeneration of today's youth and a warning to parents. They did not know and could not have known that the book and the movie that followed it would lead to a REVOLUTION in society and bring on the Era of Rock and Roll. It is widely agreed that the movie Blackboard Jungle staring Glen Ford caused the Rock and Roll Revolution. Millions of kids watched this movie and they took up the life styles of the kids depicted in the movie. The dance scenes when the movie opens were brief, lasting only a few seconds, but soon all kids were dancing like that, lifting up their partners and twirling them in the air. Bill Haley did not invent Rock and Roll and his song Rock Around the Clock was not the first song in that style, but it was the song all the kids listened to and followed. Next came Elvis and the rest is history. The opening scene to Blackboard Jungle shows students dancing in the school yard to the sound of Rock Around the Clock. Although this dance sequence lasted only a few seconds, millions of kids watched it and they all started dancing this way.

This "nightmarish but authentic" ("Time") portrait of a high school English teacher and the defiant, uncontrollable students in his charge rings with ferocious urgency and harrowing realism. A timeless rendering of youth culture set against the backdrop of 1950s New York City, "The Blackboard Jungle" speaks powerfully to the alarming epidemic of violence and security issues in today's schools.