1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish economy marked by high inflation, and the disco still riding the airwaves. When it ended, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide, inaugurating a rightward turn in American politics and culture. We still feel the effects of this tectonic shift today, as even subsequent Democratic administrations have offered neoliberal economic and social policies that owe more to Reagan than to FDR or LBJ. To understand what the American public was thinking during this pivotal year, we need to examine what they were reading, listening to, and watching.
1980: America's Pivotal Year puts the news events of the era—everything from the Iran hostage crisis to the rise of televangelism—into conversation with the year’s popular culture. Separate chapters focus on the movies, television shows, songs, and books that Americans were talking about that year, including both the biggest hits and some notable flops that failed to capture the shifting zeitgeist. As he looks at the events that had Americans glued to their screens, from the Miracle on Ice to the mystery of Who Shot J.R., cultural historian Jim Cullen garners surprising insights about how Americans’ attitudes were changing as they entered the 1980s.
Praise for Jim Cullen's previous Rutgers University Press books:
"Informed and perceptive" —Norman Lear on Those Were the Days: Why All in the Family Still Matters
"Jim Cullen is one of the most acute cultural historians writing today." —Louis P. Masur, author of The Sum of Our Dreams on Martin Scorsese and the American Dream
"This is a terrific book, fun and learned and provocative....Cullen provides an entertaining and thoughtful account of the ways that we remember and how this is influenced and directed by what we watch." —Jerome de Groot, author of Consuming History on From Memory to History
In the early twentieth century lead had many domestic uses: in solder for cans, as a gasoline additive to prevent “knocking” in engines, in water pipes, and, most prominently, in interior paint prized for its durability and ability to hold color. Far from being the toxic hazard we recognize today, lead was a valuable commodity. However, by the end of the century, lead had largely disappeared from our environment as physicians discovered the threat it posed to children’s health and mental development.
Old Paint documents the history of lead-paint poisoning in the United States and the evolving responses of public health officials and the lead-paint industry to this hazard up to 1980, by which time lead had been banned from gasoline and paint. Peter C. English traces lead poisoning from a rare, but acute problem confined to a small group of children to the discovery by the end of the 1940s of the dangers of the crumbling lead-painted interiors of inner-city dwellings. He draws on a wide range of primary materials not only to illuminate our understanding of how this health hazard changed over time, but also to explore how diseases are constructed and evolve.
Every presidential election since 1964 has been won by the candidate backed by the most united party; yet as party unity has become more important to voting decisions, it has also become increasingly difficult to achieve. In his latest book, Martin Wattenberg offers an in-depth interpretation of the presidential elections of the 1980s, illuminating current theories of political behavior and how they operate in today's candidate-centered politics.
Wattenberg investigates the impact that political parties' declining relevance has had on presidential politics. As the parties' ability to polarize opinion weakened and voters were set politically adrift, the candidates themselves had to fill the power vacuum. Interestingly, as the candidates have become more prominent, their popularity has spiraled downward. Wattenberg's national survey data debunks the notion of Reagan as the "teflon president;' demonstrating that many negative judgments stuck to Reagan's public image throughout the 1980s, particularly the criticisms of his conservative policies.
The author's intricate analysis shows that many people were torn between candidates whose policies they preferred and those who they thought would produce the best results, and these contradictory attitudes were primarily resolved in favor of Reagan and Bush.
This book is not only the successor volume to the author's widely used book on American parties, it is also a controversial and thought-provoking commentary on American parties, politics, and representative government.
The Strategy of Campaigning explores the political careers of Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, two of the most galvanizing and often controversial political figures of our time. Both men overcame defeat early in their political careers and rose to the highest elected offices in their respective countries.
The authors demonstrate how and why Reagan and Yeltsin succeeded in their political aspirations, despite—or perhaps because of—their apparent “policy extremism”: that is, their advocacy of policy positions far from the mainstream. The book analyzes the viability of policy extremism as a political strategy that enables candidates to forge new coalitions and outflank conventional political allegiances.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Julius Silver Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Condoleezza Rice is on a leave of absence from Stanford University, where she was a Professor of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is currently serving as U.S. Secretary of State.
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