Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

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

bruce j. schulman

... Show More
"A sprightly, neatly detailed and enlightening history...this is an important contribution to modern American social history and the literature of popular culture." ( Publishers Weekly )

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.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2001

This edition

Format
352 pages, Paperback
Published
April 1, 2002 by Da Capo
ISBN
9780306811265
ASIN
030681126X
Language
English

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for bruce j. schulman

bruce j. schulman

... Show More
Bruce J. Schulman is an American historian specializing in 20th-century U.S. political and economic history. He is the William E. Huntington Professor at Boston University and served as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at The Queen's College, Oxford, from 2022 to 2023. Schulman is currently writing the volume covering 1896–1929 for the Oxford History of the United States.
A graduate of Yale University (BA, 1981) and Stanford University (MA, 1982; PhD, 1987), Schulman began his academic career at UCLA before joining Boston University in 1994. He has held leadership roles, including directing the American and New England Studies program and chairing the History Department. He currently leads the Institute for American Political History at BU.
Schulman has authored three books and written for The Washington Post and Politico. His teaching has been recognized with awards such as UCLA's Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award (1993) and the American Historical Association's Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award (2006).

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 69 votes)
5 stars
22(32%)
4 stars
26(38%)
3 stars
21(30%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
69 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
DJMilez
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Another book on the seventies the decade where things went south to where we are today. I read these and other toxicology post mortems on this decade because that is where the bad turn to our present happened. We haven't escaped that decade yet in the year of our lord 2021. If you want to really know how the world works you should pay attention to the political economy of this decade that instantiated the long backlash.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
ssvb
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Got me back into non-fiction after a long hiatus. And totally explained my mother, which was nice.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
chulian1819
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
bias was so exaggerated it was almost hilarious. i finished the book not convinced that schulman actually believed his thesis that the 70s were a decade of cultural significance as he spends a healthy chunk dissing reagan into the dirt. some interesting criticism on music, but i think this undertaking was too ambitious and he would have been better off focusing his argument on media rather than economics and politics.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
MagisterStultor
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
The author's mostly liberal social and political opinions of the late sixties and eighties with a little commentary on the seventies. Playing fast and loose with the facts (one passage specifies an event that the author claims in the next sentence to have a result in the previous year) to 'prove' his opinions, this book fails at being a historical narrative. In fact, it is so far over into opinion vs fact I cannot bring myself to add it to a "History" bookshelf; it's more at home on my "Historical Fiction" shelf.
It focuses mostly on Nixon and Reagan using negative language whenever possible and only with a begrudging admission of facts that are simply too big to be glossed over. Carter is also highlighted in clumsy and disjointed attempts to elevate the memory of his presidency.

Don't get me wrong, the book does deal with some aspects of the seventies, but has major gaps and omissions. If you're looking for something dealing primarily with looking objectively back at the seventies, this book isn't for you.

0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Tekumi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
I enjoyed this book. Schulman makes a convincing case for the transformative power of the seventies over American life- from the ascendancy of the Sunbelt region to the subversion of Richard Nixon. The parallels between the seventies and now are equally fascinating and depressing.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Dayka5
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
This is what history should be. Of course I do not agree with everything, but it is thought provoking and entertaining.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Minearm
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
I don't think I have encountered in recent memory a book so heavily lifted from other sources. There are over 50 pages dedicated just to the notes section. It was not what I had hoped it would be.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
najtfaller
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Read this for a course, but it was very good. It's not a very long book, but it is densely packed with information. The way it is organized makes it both interesting and informative. The author dances between the sixties and the eighties, exploring the movements, people, and politics of the seventies.
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.