John Updike compared them to "the sun coming up on Easter morning." William F. Buckley called them "unbelievably horrible." The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. J.R.R. Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Leonard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them "little sissies." Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. They changed the way the world looked, the way it sounded, and the way it thought. President Gorbachev told Paul McCartney, "I do believe the music of the Beatles taught the young people of the Soviet Union that there is another life." No one remained unaffected by their music. President Obama spoke of how after the Beatles first came to America, "in a few short years, they had changed the way that we listened to music, thought about music, and performed music forever." On her golden wedding anniversary, Queen Elizabeth II observed: "Think what we would have missed if we had never heard the Beatles." This book traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up the Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George), and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colorful people in their orbit, among them Brian Epstein; Aunt Mimi; Yoko Ono; Phil Spector; the Singing Nun; Ed Sullivan; the Maharishi; their young fan Bruce Springstein; their psychedelic dentist, John Riley; and the con artist Magic Alex.