Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies / Edition 1

by Edward Berkowitz

Overview

In both the literal and metaphorical senses, it seemed as if 1970s America was running out of gas. The decade not only witnessed long lines at gas stations but a citizenry that had grown weary and disillusioned. High unemployment, runaway inflation, and the energy crisis, caused in part by U.S. dependence on Arab oil, characterized an increasingly bleak economic situation.

As Edward D. Berkowitz demonstrates, the end of the postwar economic boom, Watergate, and defeat in Vietnam led to an unraveling of the national consensus. Durgaing the decade, ideas about the United States, how it should be governed, and how its economy should be managed changed dramatically. Berkowitz argues that the postwar faith in sweeping social programs and a global U.S. mission was replaced by a more skeptical attitude about government's ability to positively affect society.

From Woody Allen to Watergate, from the decline of the steel industry to the rise of Bill Gates, and from Saturday Night Fever to the Sunday morning fervor of evangelical preachers, Berkowitz captures the history, tone, and spirit of the seventies. He explores the decade's major political events and movements, including the rise and fall of détente, congressional reform, changes in healthcare policies, and the hostage crisis in Iran. The seventies also gave birth to several social movements and the "rights revolution," in which women, gays and lesbians, and people with disabilities all successfully fought for greater legal and social recognition. At the same time, reaction to these social movements as well as the issue of abortion introduced a new facet into American political life-the rise of powerful, politically conservative religious organizations and activists.

Berkowitz also considers important shifts in American popular culture, recounting the creative renaissance in American film as well as the birth of the Hollywood blockbuster. He discusses how television programs such as All in the Family and Charlie's Angels offered Americans both a reflection of and an escape from the problems gripping the country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231124959
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward D. Berkowitz is professor of history and public policy and public administration at George Washington University. He is the author of eight books and the editor of three collections. Durgaing the seventies he served as a staff member of the President's Commission for a National Agenda, helping President Carter plan for a second term that never came to be.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Nixon, Watergate, and Presidential Scandal
2. Vietnam and Its Consequences
3. Running Out of Gas: The Economic Downturn and Social Change
4. The Frustrations of Gerald Ford
5. Congress and Domestic Policy in the Age of Gerald Ford
6. Jimmy Carter and the Great American Revival
7. The Rights Revolution
8. The Me Decade and the Turn to the Right
9. The Movies as Cultural Mirror
10. Television and the Reassurance of the Familiar
11. The End of the Seventies
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

Bruce J. Schulman

From Nixon to Reagan, Wilbur Mills to Bill Gates, and Roe v. Wade to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Something Happened offers a wide-ranging, nuanced, and balanced history of a watershed era in modern American life. Berkowitz's steady eye and his incisive analyses of public policy, science and medicine, and political economy make this book particularly valuable to scholars and general readers alike.

— Bruce J. Schulman, Boston University, author of The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics

Michael B. Katz

Edward Berkowitz's Something Happened is an even-handed, reliable, comprehensive, and remarkably concise account of a decade whose events transformed the nation. Watergate, Vietnam, the oil embargo, the rights revolution, stagflation, New York City's fiscal meltdown, Three Mile Island, the Iran hostage crisis, The Godfather, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Berkowitz synthesizes all these -- and more -- in his portrait of the era that marked a momentous divide in America's political economy, foreign policy, and culture.

— Michael B. Katz, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State

David Farber

In Something Happened, the always masterful Ed Berkowitz brings the complexity of the seventies era to life. His pithy accounts of that era's presidents, politics, and policymaking are brilliant.

— David Farber, Temple University, author of Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam

Gareth Davies

Something Happened will surely become the indispensable starting point for students, scholars, and general readers seeking to navigate the complex cross-currents of the 1970s. As well as providing a lucid and richly enjoyable overview of the key events of that elusive decade, Berkowitz does a brilliant job of placing them in the broader sweep of twentieth-century American history.

— Gareth Davies, University of Oxford, author of From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism

Editorial Reviews

Quite a lot happened in the 1970s and this may be the concise, yet definitive account.

Sunday Constitution

A concise glimpse of the era... Something Happened one of the better surveys to have appeared about a significant decade.

The Journal of American History - Yanek Mieczkowski

Edward Berkowitz offers a highly readable account of a decade that tends to get overlooked.

History - M. J. Heale

Scholarly, judicious, and readable... Highly recommended.

Choice

Contrary to popular wisdom, "Something Happened" in the 1970s, and Berkowitz helps us remember what that was and why it still matters.

Christian Science Monitor - Terry Hartle

A strong case that the '70s deserve far more attention than they have received.

Orange County Register - Terry hartle

Edward Berkowitz offers a highly readable account of a decade that tends to get overlooked.

History - M.J. Heale

Edward Berkowitz offers a highly readable account of a decade that tends to get overlooked.

— M. J. Heale

History

A concise glimpse of the era... Something Happened one of the better surveys to have appeared about a significant decade.

— Yanek Mieczkowski

The Journal of American History

Berkowitz has provided an essential map to what is perhaps the most misunderstood decade of the twentieth century.

— Eve Lichtgarn

Westside Chronicle

A strong case that the '70s deserve far more attention than they have received.

— Terry hartle

Orange County Register

Contrary to popular wisdom, "Something Happened" in the 1970s, and Berkowitz helps us remember what that was and why it still matters.

— Terry Hartle

Christian Science Monitor

An interesting look at a tumultuous time.

— Jules Wagman

Blade

Berkowitz... has boldly attempted to put a troubled decade into proper perspective in this concise and useful summary.

— Peter Aspden

Financial Times

A very unsettling cautionary tale.

— Erik Himmelsbach

Los Angeles Times

The 1970s used to be considered either the decade when "nothing happened" or the inward-looking "Me Decade." Of course, a lot did happen during the 1970s, as such recent books as Stephanie A. Slocum-Schaffer's America in the Seventies and Bruce J. Schulman's The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics have shown. Now Berkowitz (history, public policy & administration, George Washington Univ.; Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security) may have written the best of the lot. Borrowing his title from Joseph Heller's long-awaited second novel, Berkowitz defines the Seventies as the period from 1973 to 1981, a time that he sees as both transitional and truly transformational in U.S. history. He focuses chiefly on the political and economic events that fed into the rise of Reaganomics and social conservatism, but he also addresses the popular culture of the time, including the movies and television programming (which he calls the "reassurance of the familiar"). While readers will be familiar with the litany of problems and crises in the 1970s-Watergate, gasoline shortages, abortion politics, Three Mile Island, and the hostages in Iran-Berkowitz links these and other events to Americans' loss of faith in politicians and to a crisis of competence on the part of the government (reflected in both the Ford and Carter administrations). Further, he believes that the decade marked the end of individual and national self-confidence, both of which President Reagan partially restored in the 1980s. An illuminating chapter addresses the impact of feminism and the "rights revolution" on American society. An ambitious study that is still concisely focused and very readable, this will stand as the definitive book on the 1970s for some time to come. Highly recommended.-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Berkowitz has provided an essential map to what is perhaps the most misunderstood decade of the twentieth century.

Westside Chronicle - Eve Lichtgarn

An essential map for what is perhaps the most misunderstood decade of the twentieth century.

Associatedcontent.com

An interesting look at a tumultuous time.

Blade - Jules Wagman

A very unsettling cautionary tale.

Los Angeles Times - Erik Himmelsbach

Berkowitz... has boldly attempted to put a troubled decade into proper perspective in this concise and useful summary.

Financial Times - Peter Aspden