Why should we care about the ’70s?
This period formed the defining moment in recent American history. Most of the struggles and achievements of modern American life–the entrepreneurial energy, the competing variety of cultural and religious identities, the political ascendancy of the Sunbelt South–began taking shape.
But most people think the ’60s changed the United States.
The romantic view of the ’60s persists because the iconic events of the decade–Woodstock, the Siege of Chicago, the Summer of Love, the Black Panthers–fit the conventional model of historic change. The shifts of the ’70s don’t fit that portrait. The ’70s appears as the sickly, ugly, less accomplished younger sibling. But it was the ’70s that gave us the America we live in today.
How did it reinvent America?
One year alone, 1973, witnessed fundamental changes. It saw the end of American intervention in Vietnam, Roe v. Wade, Watergate, the Indian occupation of Wounded Knee and the first Arab oil shock. Billie Jean King won the Battle of the Sexes. “The Godfather” swept the academy awards, highlighting both the triumph of a new, personal director-oriented cinema and the renewed interest in ethnic identity among white Americans previously content with the melting pot.
Why does pop culture play such a large role in your book?
During the ’70s, the public sphere of government and politics became less important, while the private spheres of business and pop culture became more important. When I ask people to name the emblematic figure of the ’60s, I get J.F.K. or Martin Luther King. But for the ’70s, I hear not Nixon or Jimmy Carter, but John Travolta.
