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1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America Hardcover – April 4, 2006

by Andreas Killen (Author)

6 customer reviews

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An engaging and eye-opening dissection of a watershed year in American history.

Tumultuous and exciting, 1973 marked the end of the 1960s and the birth of a new cultural sensibility. A year of shattering political crisis, 1973 was defined by defeat in Vietnam, Roe v. Wade, the oil crisis and the Watergate hearings. It was also a year of remarkable creative ferment. From landmark movies such as The Exorcist, Mean Streets, and American Graffiti to seminal books such as Fear of Flying and Gravity's Rainbow, from the proto-punk band the New York Dolls to the first ever reality TV show, The American Family, the cultural artifacts of the year testify to a nation in the middle of a serious identity crisis.

1973 Nervous Breakdown offers a fever chart of a year of uncertainty, fragility, and change, a year in which post-war prosperity crumbles and modernism gives way to postmodernism. Killen ransacks newspapers, magazines, novels, films, TV shows and music to bring to life traumatic events. The fate of the family, the future of the presidency, the sanity of the masses―all of these bedrocks of society are threatened. 1973 marks the pivotal year of a decade whose impact on our own cultural zeitgeist remains considerable―a decade in sore need of liberation both from the long shadow of the 1960s and from the backwards shadow cast by the 1980s. With this book, Andreas Killen offers a lively and revelatory analysis of one of the most important periods in the second half of the 20th century.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to CCNY assistant history professor Killen, 1973 was "a cultural watershed, a moment of major realignments and shifts in American politics, culture, and society," and he examines these transformations in a series of essays. Andy Warhol's Interview magazine chronicled America's obsession with celebrity culture, from its homage to screen icons like Marilyn Monroe to its sympathetic portrayal of gender-bending trash-rock band the New York Dolls. The year 1973 also saw the rise of Ted Patrick, who claimed to have deprogrammed over 100 young people who had fallen into the clutches of religious cults, and the transformation of Vietnam War POWs into heroes as a Watergate-embroiled Nixon sought to bask in their reflected glory. The best pieces focus on PBS's trailblazing reality TV show An American Family, and the media's progressive invasion of American lives. Disasters and hijackings made air travel a flash point for extreme fear. Although his prose is frequently opaque and stilted, and his selection of 1973 seems arbitrary (why not 1974, the year of Patty Hearst's kidnapping and Nixon's resignation?), the perceptive Killen sheds welcome light on our collective experience. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* According to historian Killen, not only are the 1970s the least understood of the postwar decades, 1973 stands as an under-recognized "cultural watershed." Taking a cue from Mark Kurlansky's 1968 (2004), Killen presents a cogently argued, finely detailed, and thoroughly involving portrait of the year that delivered Roe v. Wade, Watergate, the winding down of the Vietnam War, the Arab oil embargo, the completion of the World Trade Center, repeated hijackings, and an outbreak of cults. To gauge the state of the American psyche, he deftly interprets Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and the hit movies The Exorcist, American Graffiti, and Deep Throat. He also draws inspired parallels between Nixon's secret White House recordings; the first reality television series, An American Family; and Andy Warhol's enshrining of celebrity mania. Killen ponders the year's mix of cynicism and decadence, and society's preference for artifice over authenticity. He also chronicles the launching of big-bucks televangelism, the collapse of inner cities as the government pulled funding from domestic programs to support an unconscionable war, and criminality at the highest levels of government, drawing direct parallels between the seventies and our current decade. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (April 4, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596910593
ISBN-13: 978-1596910591
Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 6 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,885,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2486 in Books > History > Middle East > Israel & Palestine
- #21275 in Books > History > Asia
- #55661 in Books > History > Military

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David M. Herman

A Good Book

April 28, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is an enjoyable book that includes many important details and commentary concerning the 1960's and 1970's. However, I wish that it had spent less time on the Andy Warhol scene and more time on substantial issues such as the U.S. economy, and sociological changes in society. Nonetheless, I am definitely glad that I read this book, and I recommend it to others who are interested in the era of of the 1960's and 1970's. Conclusion: This book is rated at 4.5 stars.

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A Discerning Reader

Rambling and Misdirected

December 30, 2006

1973 was a seminal year in US history, and Andreas Killen (City College of New York history professor), correctly identifies it as such in his book. Some of the more interesting sections of his book deal with the end of the war in Vietnam and the return of the POWs, Watergate, and the legitimate questions about Nixon's psychological health. He includes a lot of seemingly adulatory material on Andy Warhol and the transvestite punk-rock culture. In a boring and overlong chapter, Killen spends a great deal of time ruminating about how important the Loud family was in their TV show, The American Family. Killen's writing style is strained throughout the book, and his sentence structure is overly complex and sometimes disjointed.

I felt Prof. Killen should have heavily edited the sections on The American Family and the drug hazed Warholites. In wallowing about the forgotten movies of the midseventies and breathlessly praising the Hollywood directors of that year, he overstates the importance of these entertainers and seems to think they were cataclysmic contributors to US history. This sort of attitude is embraced today by the People magazine culture, uninterested in reading anything more than a caption under a celebrity's photograph. Instead of giggling about the New York Dolls, where's a mention of Led Zeppelin or Dark Side of the Moon (which came out that year)?

In getting caught up in how wonderful American Graffiti and Francis Ford Coppola are, Killen grossly under-represents or fails to mention Roe v. Wade, the downing of Libyan Airlines Flight 114, Nixon's visit to China, the showdown at Wounded Knee, the founding (and reasons for the founding) of the DEA, the conclusion of the Thalidomide class action suit, the Houston Mass Murders, the Saturday Night Massacre, and the APA's belated removal of homosexuality from the DSM. What was happening in the art world at that time, or in classical music?

Prof. Killen's main idea was right--1973 was an important year, and maybe it did represent the death of the Sixties and the birth of a neurotic, conspiracy-minded era in modern US history. However, he overemphasizes the above-mentioned subjects and too narrowly defines the important events of that year.

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James Hicks

survey of shifts, implosions and psychology of a year in American history

December 23, 2007

This book is a worthwhile immersion back into the many strains and tendencies that ran through American life and culture in the 60's and early 70's; in doing that it offers hints into the contemporary political scene. It connects many events in the political, economic, cultural life of that time. It seems to be a good entry into recent American history. The writing style is a little disorienting - in that many ideas and events are shown as being linked together but in a loose way (it felt like reading a Marshall McLuhan book in that no too sharp conclusions are drawn, but there are many half-ghosted ideas introduced that one can choose to explore in other ways and with other methods ) but it is a good starting point for one's own exploration of the ideas and events of that time.

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Roth

Hit the nail squarely on the head.

April 29, 2011

Andreas Killen nailed it! 1973, barely recognized as the year that should go down in history as the "great" transition from an era that celebrated the middle class to the start of an era that began its erosion, is as Killen said, a "cultural watershed". The present does not arise in a vacuum, and Killen proves this as he successfully weaves together the events and themes of 1973 into a pattern whose frame establishes an age that is to come.

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Rich Russ

I laughed out loud and I learned some things

June 8, 2006

I really enjoyed this book! After years of thinking about the 1970's as political and cultural deadweight, I was surprised to discover how significant the 1970's were in shaping our current social and political landscape. I was captivated by the ways that Killen wove together seemingly disparate events and themes. His writing is both smart and accessible. I laughed out loud and I learned some things, which is strong praise in my book. I highly recommend this book and I can't wait for the sequel. 1984 anyone?

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saabrian

Very comprehensive

May 3, 2012

A very comprehensive look at a pivotal year in which the country seemed coming apart at the seems and, as the author describes it, the cultural wars began.

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