ABSTRACT
A rule of thumb among historians holds that there is little point in trying to assess history that is less than thirty years in the past because it is still too soon to have the proper perspective. If we accept this notion, then what follows here, at least after 1974, is not to be trusted. And given the differing ways that the 1970s have been viewed in only the twenty-some years since they ended, that may be fair. Following the tumultuous 1960s, the ’70s were considered something of a hangover even while they were going on, and the trend toward introspection was remarked. In an article published in New York magazine on August 23, 1976, when the decade was only a little more than half over, Tom Wolfe coined the term the “Me Decade” to describe these years. By the ’80s, they were dismissed, though by the ’90s the twenty-year cycle of nostalgia that has become common (and that had its birth in the surge of interest in the ’50s during the early ’70s) had lent them an affectionate glow, leading to commemorative books and CD box sets. Then in 2000, archconservative David Frum’s book How We Got Here: The ’70s argued that it was the 1970s, not the ’60s, that marked the blossoming of a cultural and political radicalism that made the right-wing Reagan era of the ’80s all but inevitable.
