The Seventies

Starred review from February 26, 2001

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.

Starred review from June 15, 2001
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 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2001
Southerner Augustus Cochran's " Democracy "Heading South [BKL Ap 1 01] suggests that the political institutions of the "Solid South" have been nationalized. In " The Seventies," Boston University American studies professor Schulman broadens this analysis, arguing that the nation's center of gravity shifted during the "long 70s" (1969-1984), profoundly affecting politics, religion, culture, and popular attitudes. Nixon's "Southern strategy" had an impact, as did the angry "backlash" against the changes the movements of the 1960s produced. Other factors included activists who cut their teeth in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, and national and international events that seemed to validate Americans' mistrust of government and "unusual faith in the market." To be sure, the transformation Schulman traces was not a return to the 1950s: "A new ethic of personal liberation trumped older notions of decency, civility, and restraint," and even the Moral Majority "adopted a defiant, in-your-face style." Withdrawal of trust from government and substitution of faith in entrepreneurship may be the most important change Schulman traces. Expect interest, since we're still living with the fruits of the 1970s.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)