American Life In The 1980s
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Author | : Kate Conley |
Publisher | : ABDO |
Total Pages | : 115 |
Release | : 2023-08-01 |
Genre | : Juvenile Nonfiction |
ISBN | : 1098271726 |
American Life in the 1980s takes a look at the major events that occurred throughout this decade and offers information on the demographics of the United States at the time. Readers will gain an understanding of the politics, conflicts, science, inventions, pop culture, fashion, and sports of the decade, and they will learn about the legacy the 1980s left behind. Features include a glossary, a timeline, references, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Author | : David Sirota |
Publisher | : Ballantine Books |
Total Pages | : 305 |
Release | : 2011-03-15 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0345518802 |
Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past. In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes readers on a rollicking DeLorean ride back in time to reveal how so many of our present-day conflicts are rooted in the larger-than-life pop culture of the 1980s—from the “Greed is good” ethos of Gordon Gekko (and Bernie Madoff) to the “Make my day” foreign policy of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush) to the “transcendence” of Cliff Huxtable (and Barack Obama). Today’s mindless militarism and hypernarcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an ’80s generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and “Just Do It” exhortations embraced a new religion—with comic books, cartoons, sneaker commercials, videogames, and even children’s toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination. Meanwhile, in productions such as Back to the Future, Family Ties, and The Big Chill, a campaign was launched to reimagine the 1950s as America’s lost golden age and vilify the 1960s as the source of all our troubles. That 1980s revisionism, Sirota shows, still rages today, with Barack Obama cast as the 60s hippie being assailed by Alex P. Keaton–esque Republicans who long for a return to Eisenhower-era conservatism. “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” The 1980s—even more so. With the native dexterity only a child of the Atari Age could possess, David Sirota twists and turns this multicolored Rubik’s Cube of a decade, exposing it as a warning for our own troubled present—and possible future.
Author | : United States. Panel on the Quality of American Life |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 160 |
Release | : 1980 |
Genre | : Quality of life |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Bradford Martin |
Publisher | : Macmillan + ORM |
Total Pages | : 256 |
Release | : 2011-03-01 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 142995342X |
In this engaging new book, Bradford Martin illuminates a different 1980s than many remember—one whose history has been buried under the celebratory narrative of conservative ascendancy. Ronald Reagan looms large in most accounts of the period, encouraging Americans to renounce the activist and liberal politics of the 1960s and ‘70s and embrace the resurgent conservative wave. But a closer look reveals that a sizable swath of Americans strongly disapproved of Reagan's policies throughout his presidency. With a weakened Democratic Party scurrying for the political center, many expressed their dissatisfaction outside electoral politics. Unlike the civil rights and Vietnam era protesters, activists of the 1980s often found themselves on the defensive, struggling to preserve the hard-won victories of the previous era. Their successes, then, were not in ushering in a new era of progressive reforms but in effecting change in areas from professional life to popular culture, while beating back an even more forceful political shift to the right. Martin paints an indelible portrait of these and other influential, but often overlooked, movements: from on-the-ground efforts to constrain the administration's aggressive Latin American policy and stave off a possible Nicaraguan war, to mock shanties constructed on college campuses to shed light on corporate America's role in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa. The result is a clearer, richer perspective on a turbulent decade in American life.
Author | : Andrew C. McKevitt |
Publisher | : UNC Press Books |
Total Pages | : 289 |
Release | : 2017-08-31 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1469634481 |
This insightful book explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan's remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian nation to overtake the United States? Or could Japan's globe-trotting corporations serve as a model for battered U.S. industries, pointing the way to a future of globalized commerce and culture? While popular films and literature recycled old anti-Asian imagery and crafted new ways of imagining the "yellow peril," and formal U.S.-Japan relations remained locked in a holding pattern of Cold War complacency, a remarkable shift was happening in countless local places throughout the United States: Japanese goods were remaking American consumer life and injecting contemporary globalization into U.S. commerce and culture. What impact did the flood of billions of Japanese things have on the ways Americans produced, consumed, and thought about their place in the world? From autoworkers to anime fans, Consuming Japan introduces new unorthodox actors into foreign-relations history, demonstrating how the flow of all things Japanese contributed to the globalizing of America in the late twentieth century.
Author | : Andrew Hartman |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 368 |
Release | : 2019-04-26 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 022662207X |
The “unrivaled” history of America’s divided politics, now in a fully updated edition that examines the rise of Trump—and what comes next (New Republic). When it was published in 2015, Andrew Hartman’s history of the culture wars was widely praised for its compelling and even-handed account of how they came to define American politics at the close of the twentieth century. But it also garnered attention for Hartman’s declaration that the culture wars were over—and that the left had won. In the wake of Trump’s rise, driven by an aggressive fanning of those culture war flames, Hartman has brought A War for the Soul of America fully up to date, detailing the ways in which Trump’s success, while undeniable, represents the last gasp of culture war politics—and how the reaction he has elicited can show us early signs of the very different politics to come. “As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled . . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas . . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved.” —New Republic
Author | : Randall Balmer |
Publisher | : Basic Books |
Total Pages | : 306 |
Release | : 2014-05-13 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 0465056954 |
A religious biography of Jimmy Carter, the controversial president whose political rise and fall coincided with the eclipse of Christian progressivism and the emergence of the Religious Right. Evangelical Christianity and conservative politics are today seen as inseparable. But when Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and a born-again Christian, won the presidency in 1976, he owed his victory in part to American evangelicals, who responded to his open religiosity and his rejection of the moral bankruptcy of the Nixon Administration. Carter, running as a representative of the New South, articulated a progressive strand of American Christianity that championed liberal ideals, racial equality, and social justice -- one that has almost been forgotten since. In Redeemer, acclaimed religious historian Randall Balmer reveals how the rise and fall of Jimmy Carter's political fortunes mirrored the transformation of American religious politics. From his beginnings as a humble peanut farmer to the galvanizing politician who rode a reenergized religious movement into the White House, Carter's life and career mark him as the last great figure in America's long and venerable history of progressive evangelicalism. Although he stumbled early in his career-courting segregationists during his second campaign for Georgia governor -- Carter's run for president marked a return to the progressive principles of his faith and helped reenergize the evangelical movement. Responding to his message of racial justice, women's rights, and concern for the plight of the poor, evangelicals across the country helped propel Carter to office. Yet four years later, those very same voters abandoned him for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Carter's defeat signaled the eclipse of progressive evangelicalism and the rise of the Religious Right, which popularized a dramatically different understanding of the faith, one rooted in nationalism, individualism, and free-market capitalism. An illuminating biography of our 39th president, Redeemer presents Jimmy Carter as the last great standard-bearer of an important strand of American Christianity, and provides an original and riveting account of the moments that transformed our political landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.
Author | : Brian C. Black |
Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Total Pages | : 259 |
Release | : 2006-05-30 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0313024669 |
Americans during the twentieth-century became more disconnected from the environment and nature than ever before. More Americans lived in cities rather than on farms; they became ever more reliant on technology to interact with the world around them and with each other. Perhaps paradoxically, the twentieth-century also became the period in which environmental issues played an ever-increasing role in politics and public policy. Why is this so? Perhaps because, despite what many people believe, nature and the environment remains central to everyone's daily life. Pollution, environmental degradation, urban sprawl, loss of wildlife and biodiversity - all of these issues directly impact how everyone - even city dwellers - live their lives. Nature and the Environment in Twentieth-Century America addresses a wide variety of the environmental issues that impacted the lives of people of all classes, races, and regions: ; The expansion of the National Park system and the increased desire for leisure time spent in the great outdoors ; The devastation of the Dust Bowl and its impetus toward conservation and a greater understanding of ecology ; Grassroots activism and environmental politics from Rachel Carson to Love Canal ; The impact of globalization and its environmental consequences on the daily lives of Americans Part of the Daily Life through History series, this title joins Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Americain a new branch of the series-titles specifically looking at how science innovations impacted daily life.
Author | : Haynes Johnson |
Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
Total Pages | : 532 |
Release | : 2003 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 9780393324341 |
National bestseller: In this brilliantly readable book, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the Reagan decade, when America fell from dominant world power to struggling debtor nation and when optimism turned to foreboding. In human terms and living case histories, Haynes Johnson captures the drama and tragedy of an era nurtured by greed and a morality that found virtue in not getting caught."It is morning again in America," Reagan's campaign commercials told us, and for too long we embraced that convenient lie. Indeed, the problems that came to plague us in that decade are with us even more today, as Johnson memorably demonstrates in--his afterword, "Notes on an Era," written especially for this new paperback reissue. This book will remain a signature work of political analysis for years to come.
Author | : Philip Jenkins |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 353 |
Release | : 2006-03-15 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0198039727 |
Why did the youthful optimism and openness of the sixties give way to Ronald Reagan and the spirit of conservative reaction--a spirit that remains ascendant today? Drawing on a wide array of sources--including tabloid journalism, popular fiction, movies, and television shows--Philip Jenkins argues that a remarkable confluence of panics, scares, and a few genuine threats created a climate of fear that led to the conservative reaction. He identifies 1975 to 1986 as the watershed years. During this time, he says, there was a sharp increase in perceived threats to our security at home and abroad. At home, America seemed to be threatened by monstrous criminals--serial killers, child abusers, Satanic cults, and predatory drug dealers, to name just a few. On the international scene, we were confronted by the Soviet Union and its evil empire, by OPEC with its stranglehold on global oil, by the Ayatollahs who made hostages of our diplomats in Iran. Increasingly, these dangers began to be described in terms of moral evil. Rejecting the radicalism of the '60s, which many saw as the source of the crisis, Americans adopted a more pessimistic interpretation of human behavior, which harked back to much older themes in American culture. This simpler but darker vision ultimately brought us Ronald Reagan and the ascendancy of the political Right, which more than two decades later shows no sign of loosening its grip. Writing in his usual crisp and witty prose, Jenkins offers a truly original and persuasive account of a period that continues to fascinate the American public. It is bound to captivate anyone who lived through this period, as well as all those who want to understand the forces that transformed--and continue to define--the American political landscape.