The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics [Paperback]

Bruce Schulman (Author), Bruce J. Schulman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 030681126X | ISBN-13: 978-0306811265 | Publication Date: April 16, 2002

Sweeping away misconceptions about the "Me Decade," Bruce Schulman offers a fast-paced, wide-ranging, and brilliant examination of the political, cultural, social, and religious upheavals of the 1970s. Arguing that it was one of the most important of the postwar twentieth-century decades, despite its reputation as an eminently forgettable period, Schulman reconstructs public events and private lives, high culture and low, analyzing not only presidential politics and national policy but also the broader social and cultural experiences that transformed American life. Here are the names, faces, and movements that gave birth to the world we now live in-from Nixon and Carter to The Godfather and the Ramones; from Billie Jean King and Phyllis Schlafly to NOW and the ERA; from the Energy Crisis to Roe v. Wade. The Seventies is an astutely provocative reexamination of a misunderstood era.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

During the era that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was soaring high on self-help platitudes, the Village People were bringing a campy sensibility to the discos, and "Ms." was replacing older forms of female address, the United States, according to Schulman, was undergoing some of the most drastic and profound changes in its history. A professor of history and director of American Studies at Boston University, Schulman has fashioned a sprightly, neatly detailed and enlightening history of a period that many historians have written off as an uneventful time. While Saturday Night Live embodied the "contempt for authority" that was prevalent during the period, it was, he says, also part of a culture that "reinvented America" in ways that were deeply progressive and political. From social movements like feminism, gay liberation and the "gray panthers," to the emergence of Jimmy Carter and the politics of the sunbelt, to the startling notion of "diversity" "the prospect of unlike, unassimilable groups as a good to be valued" the 1970s altered basic concepts about the individual, race, economics, politics and society. This book's power comes from its ability to capture both the myriad contradictions as well as the cultural and political syncopations of the time. Schulman's breadth of examples from popular and political culture and his ability to use them to illuminate one another make for astute analysis as well as colorful social history. Far more historically accurate, nuanced and judicious than David Frum's How We Got Here: The 70's (2000), this is an important contribution to modern American social history and the literature of popular culture.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Last year, conservative polemicist David Frum asserted in How We Got Here (LJ 2/15/00) that it was the Seventies rather than the Sixties that defined the final quarter of the American century. Historian Schulman (Boston Univ.; From Cotton Belt to Sun Belt) starts and ends with the same premise but keeps his ideological perspectives under wraps in this consistently incisive and interpretative account of America from Nixon's second term through Reagan's first. Schulman masterfully summarizes the essential policy approaches of each administration during an era of isolationist sentiment, mistrust of government, hedonism, and disillusionment with New Deal liberalism. Comfortable with politics, economics, and a wide range of social phenomena, Schulman is equally penetrating when describing the transformation of the marginal Goldwater New Right into the Reagan majority and reevaluating the culture of disco and significance of Rambo. Indeed, this book only disappoints in its rare omissions; for instance, Schulman never mentions the Iranian hostages and fails to get across the psychological intensity of the energy crisis. Until he gets around to an expanded edition, this is the best first word on the subject, required for academic libraries and worthwhile for most public collections. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 334 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030681126X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306811265
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The decade of disillusionment, disco, and disassimilation, November 2, 2002

By 

Daniel J. Hamlow (Narita, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Hardcover)

I have a preoccupation with the 1970's, as I should've lived in America and become more Americanized during that formative period of my youth. Well, guess what? I did a little, but not enough of the 1970's culture was filtered into my household. As a result, I felt alienated from America, and still haven't come to terms with it. So when I discovered Bruce Shulman's book, The Seventies-The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, and Politics, I saw an analytical treasure trove. Basically, the beginnings of contemporary America began not in the 60's, but the 70's, and Schulman effectively makes his case here.

With the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968, the optimism that had lighted the country burned out into the disillusionment of the 1970's. The melting pot was transformed into a salad bowl in the 70's, as various ethnic groups went on the cultural nationalism bandwagon, be they African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, whatever-Americans. I remember those commercials on a certain group, with someone concluding, "I'm proud to be a Chinese/Italian/Japanese-American."

The various fads and movements are also touched on here, such as Werner Erhard's EST, radical feminism, New Age, the New Right Christians, the environmentalist movement, Gray Panthers, to list a few. Strangely enough, the SLA, People's Temple and the Moonies aren't mentioned. But the people thought there must be another answer. After losing Vietnam, we had entered, in the words of Jimmy Carter, "a crisis of confidence," even before he came to office.

The feeling that authority figures were not trustworthy hit a high point with Watergate, and an early chapter focuses on Richard Nixon and his policies. This theme carried on later in Jimmy Carter's "crisis of confidence" speech.

And while I'm at it--Jimmy Carter's given a sympathetic treatment by Schulman. His humble facade, attempts to de-imperialize the presidency, and Congress's tearing apart his energy policy are covered. Basically, he had good intentions, but came face-to-face with a Congress still steaming after Watergate.

And what book would not be complete without entertainment? There was the narcissistic indulgence of glam artists KISS and David Bowie (both in my top artists lists, BTW), the continuing importance of Bob Dylan with Blood On The Tracks, and punk rock as typified by the Sex Pistols, Clash, and Ramones. The Clash's anarchic message demonstrated the anger against the establishment, and even called for people to "Kick down the wall/cause governments to fall" in the song "Clampdown."

Even Saturday Night Fever, with its escapist theme living side by side with the economic souring of that time, is covered. There's a certain flavour in 70's movies, be it the hairstyles, clothes, cars, the vermilion dye that substituted for blood, and film quality that reaches out to me. The feeling of anger, disaffectedness, and distrust in authority from that bygone decade harkens to me.

The Hegelian synthesis of Alan Alda's sensitive male and John Wayne's red-blooded macho male was an interesting read. This is discussed in the Battle of the Sexes, which includes Billie Jean King teaching Bobby Riggs a well-deserved lesson.

The book concludes with the beginning of the Reagan Years, of how conservatism took over, and how counter-culture icons like Jane Fonda and Jerry Rubin sold out to crass capitalist values of the "My Decade." An additional postscript was how Grenada, Libya, and later Panama gradually brought America out of the Vietnam Syndrome. Schulman has done a wonderful job bringing the dynamics of the 1970's together in one volume.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 70's Scene, June 26, 2001

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Thomas Magnum (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Hardcover)

Bruce J. Schulman's takes a look at how the Seventies shaped the political structure of today. The book actually stretches from 1968 to 1985 and Mr. Schulman deftly shows how the country's political power shifted from the Northeast to the South and how the country moved from the prevailing liberalism of the left to the conservative right. Along the way he discusses the presidencies of Nixon, Carter & Reagan and the social and cultural movements such as Women's Lib, The New South, Minority Equality and others as well as issues like property taxes, environmentalism, skyrocketing inflation and the energy crisis. Interspersed among all the political talk is a look at the music, film, television and how they mirrored the times. Mr. Schulman does a superb job of showing how the 70's seemed to a time of malaise, but actually shaped our country more than we think.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Superficial coverage of an imprtant era, January 6, 2010

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Avid Reader (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics (Paperback)

I'm a huge fan of the alt-rocker Jonathan Richman, so I should have been delighted that Bruce Schulman devoted nearly 4 pages in a book of only 250 pages to covering Jonathan's songs and performance style. But I found myself wondering why a book that starts with Richard Nixon and ends with Ronald Reagan can waste so much space on a minor punk and rock influence. It's as if the author, a professor in Boston, was trying to show that he was cool because (though he doesn't say it), he went to Jonathan's shows when he was an undergrad in Cambridge.

I grew up in 70s -- finished high school in 1980 -- and I know the terrain well enough to be able to state this book gives a reasonable sense of what it was like to live during that era. The author does a good job of showing how the failure of 1960s radicals and hippies to transform the world led to the cynical, ironic, and disillusioned 70s, and then to the highly selfish 80s. He gives a good sense of how the decade felt frivolous, especially after Vietnam was wound down and Nixon left office, and then the economy slammed into a wall when the oil embargoes started. He hits the cultural high spots (or low spots, depending on your perspective): disco and punk music challenging the giant arena rock shows; television expanding beyond white suburban families; the rise of women in sports, business, and politics; etc. So far, so good.

But this book falls far short in many ways. First, it spends too much time on politics at the highest level -- Nixon, Carter, Reagan -- without going into enough depth. To understand the economic challenges that Jimmy Carter faced would require a book itself. To understand Richard Nixon's rise and flameout would require a whole library. I can't imagine that anyone who didn't already know a fair amount of economic history would understand Schulman's descriptions of Carter's deregulation and then price control initiatives; and yet, a person who did know it wouldn't learn anything new from the light coverage, either. It would be better if the author just dropped it almost entirely, rather than zipping through it in a few pages.

Also, as noted above, the author seems to struggle with what's important and what isn't. Songs like "American Pie" or movies like "Chinatown" were popular in their time, and Baby Boomers feel nostalgic about them to this day, but they are not especially important. The attempt to juxtapose those kinds of things (and there are scores of examples in the book) with political events feels like they're coming from an academic who is searching for "big" statements to make.

The most interesting aspects of the book are a few genuinely sweeping cultural generalizations. Schulman lifts these ideas from others, which isn't a criticism, because he does a good job of synthesizing the facts. These include: 1) The loss of a national sense of purpose after the violence of 1968 and Richard Nixon's lies, which directly led to the anti-tax revolts of the 70s and the Reagan years; 2) The beginnings of a Third Awakening of religious fervor in America that we still see today; 3) Efforts by all sorts of subgroups (women, the elderly, Hispanics, Indians, environmentalists) to get their piece of the pie, by following the examples of the civil rights movement. These important developments really did happen, even as the mass culture focused on trivia and titillation instead.

One reviewer noted that this book was the "first word" on the 70s. I'm waiting eagerly for a "second word" that's deeper and more fluidly written.