Fiction 1962

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey's first novel set in an Oregon asylum is a an attack on mindless authority.

King Rat 

James Clavell's literary debut of a wheeler dealer in a WWII Japanese prison camp.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury's story of two adolescent boys caught up in a dark carnival that comes to town. Puts Bradbury on the map.

Isaac Asimov, editor - The Hugo Winners
J. G. Ballard - The Drowned World
William Barrett - Lilies of the Field
John Braine - Life at the Top
Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - Fail-Safe
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
William S. Burroughs - The Ticket That Exploded
Taylor Caldwell - A Prologue To Love
Len Deighton - The IPCRESS File
August Derleth - The Trail of Cthulhu
August Derleth, editor - Dark Mind, Dark Heart
Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
Allen Drury - A Shade of Difference
William Faulkner - The Reivers
Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Loved Me
Aldous Huxley - Island
James Jones - The Thin Red Line
John le Carré - A Murder of Quality
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Dearly Beloved
H.P. Lovecraft - Dreams and Fancies
Alistair MacLean - The Satan Bug
Eloise McGraw - The Golden Goblet
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood
Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones
Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
Mary Renault - The Bull from the Sea
Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Mary Stewart - The Moon-Spinners
Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
Irving Wallace - The Prize
Elie Wiesel - Day
David Wilkerson - The Cross and the Switchblade
Herman Wouk - Youngblood Hawke

More on each new book of 1962 at Wikipedia

Non Fiction 1962

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's book began the environmental movement. It explained the impact of chemicals and pesticides on the environment, specifically her Everglades study on how DDT thinned the shells of bird and reptile eggs killing the embryos.

Capitalism and Freedom

Milton Friedman's conservative counterpunch to the liberal Keynesian economics of the time. Freidman advocated the move of public education to private school vouchers, no licensing of doctors or hospitals, the elimination of all tariffs with the general theme that money represents what is good in the world while government represents what is bad.

Sex and the Single Girl

Helen Gurley Brown set the stage for the feminism to come by encouraging women to pursue a single life, a career, financial independence and accepting how they look.

1962 Tony Awards (theater)

Paul Scofield

Outstanding Play - A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Actor Dramatic - Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons

Actress Dramatic  - Margaret Leighton, Night of the Iguanas

Actor Dramatic Supporting - Walter Matthau, A Shot in the Dark

Actress Dramatic Supporting - Elizabeth Ashley, Take Her, She's Mine

Outstanding Dramatic Director - Noel Willman, A Man for All Seasons

Comedy 1962

Grammy Awards for Comedy  1962
Elaine May & Mike Nichols for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May

Vaughn Meader who could mimic JFK became a hit with the album The First Family. His fame was short lived as JFK's assassination the next year ended his career.