Customer Reviews

America in the Seventies (Culture America)

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Around the early 1990's, there began a nostalgic mania for everything 70's. Bell-bottoms, seen as a joke in the 1980's, were back in style. Disco, once the butt of jokes, was popular again. Perhaps the movie "Dazed and Confused" inspired it? But since nobody born after 1975 could remember the 70's, could young people really understand the issues of the time?

This book about 1970's America offers fresh and disturbing angles on the decade. One of the examples is the movie "Looking for Mister Goodbar" with Diane Keaton. The author uses this to show a side of the "Sexual Revolution" that college professors and horny college guys speak of frequently. Discussions of the 1970's attitude towards "free sex" is usually positive; it was a decade where consenting adults had the new freedom to explore sexuality. But the author has a darker view. Women could easily put themselves in a dangerous situations, in a decade before AIDS made us wary. He also wonders if the sense of rebellion among American women led them to make poor judgments with men, as does the character in the movie. The protagonist has a respectable job, and by night she seeks dangerous relationships. Is she rebelling against her "good girl" persona? Did rebellion lead naive girls into dangerous lifestyles? Is this a topic we can discuss without looking like male chauvinists?

Some look back fondly at the "good old days." Others say there were never any "good old days." 1970's New York was a crime-ridden hellhole, which is why my parents moved to Queens in 1980. But people still look at the 70's as a decade of color, fashion, music, and culture. Sometimes we even feel nostalgic for the grimy, dirty, New York City streets from "Taxi Driver" and "Deathwish," although at the same time you can't disappreciate the reduction in crime in the last 20 years. Today, you see retro-80's clothing in the stores, but for me it brings back no fond memories. Someone born after 1985 won't remember the AIDS scare, Iran, the Cold War, the Crack epidemic, and the things that me feel NO nostalgia for the era.

Perhaps nostalgia sometimes blinds us to reality.

I had read the Age of Great Dreams by Farber and I was hoping this book would be similiar. It isn't, instead it's a collection of authors who unfortunately for me, just don't rival Farber's writing.

The lighthearted cover of this one, with photos of Archie and Edith Bunker, Farrah Fawcett and John Travolta's disco stance, is a bit misleading. This is not a light read, geared toward the fad culture of the seventies. Instead, this is a studied look at the politics, social movements and major influences of the decade.

I found some of the writing in these essays dry, even for nonfiction. Others, like 'She "can bring home the bacon"', which covered the women's liberation movement and "Adults Only", which talked about the so-called sexual revolution, fascinated me.

Whether you grew up during the seventies, as I did, were an older adult or a glimmer in your parents' eyes, this book offers a perspective of the much overlooked decade that can only be seen in hindsight.

Having lived through the 70s, I couldn't wait to get to the 80s. Now that I've read this book, I'm glad I took my time. A lot more happened in the 70s then mood rings, pet rocks, disco, and Saturday Night Fever (30th Anniversary Special Collector's Edition). The 70s were a unique time and this book takes a hard look at the decade with lots of fresh insights.

Jeffrey Miller, author of War Remains a Korean War novel