The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics [Paperback]

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.

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.

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.