Rating: 
Summary: There Is No Here Here
Review: To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there is no "Here" in this book. When the book is entitled "How We Got Here" I expect to get thoughtful insights linking what happened in the '70s to the world we're dealing with as the century turns. There is little or none of that, so what's the point? I've read histories of the '70s before (cf. Peter Carroll's "It Seemed Like Nothing Happened"). Add to that some sloppy spelling, fact-checking, grammar, and tenuous reasoning, and you've got a real disappointment on your hands.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that lives up to the best reviews of it.
Review: This book is the best analysis of a generation that I have ever read. It is balanced, insightful and even eloquent. The author stops when when he has finished what he has to say; there is not a wasted page. The part about the federal court ordered busing in South Boston is the most riveting. I have thought about this book constantly since I read it three weeks ago, and have re-read many parts of it. You won't be disappointed in it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Hole Story
Review: "In the 70s, Dunkin Donuts started selling doughnut holes (or if not the actual holes, then a fascimile of same). In so doing, they answered a question that had been scratching away at American's national unconscious for years: what happens to the stuff in the middle and why? This grand marketing strategy had unintended consequences however, effects which could only have occurred in this 'slum of a decade.' For only in the 70s could this 'line extension' (to borrow a phrase popular with marketers of that era), have been imported into the political discourse. Not surprisingly, liberals applauded the 'outing' of the holes; conservatives, rightly so, were outraged that the topic came up for discussion." Reality check -- Dunkin Donuts *did* introduce donut holes in the 70s, but everything else above is a fabrication -- the same strategy which Mr. Frum employs throughout this book. Here's how it works: pick a detail, any detail from the 70s, classify it with scads and scads of other details, the more extreme the better. Best extreme details: lots of stuff about gay sexual practices as indicative that they began their takover of American culture way back then. Now finesse these details into the standard conservative schema (things were better back when people just did as they were told,) then spin entertaining and completely specious observations around the details either as a symptom or a cause of negative social change. Very important that you make sure you sprinkle on tons and tons of details! This will distract readers from noticing that gaping hole in the center where real thought and insight should have been.
Rating:
Summary: But the 70's also brought us Ronald Reagan
Review: My high school years and first two years of college occurred during the 1970's, so I am a contemporary of the author. David Frum paints a haunting picture of the nonsense that occurred during the decade when I came of age--nonsense that was encouraged by both Republican and Democratic presidents. The full-blown assault on the American economy through weak-kneed foreign policy, price controls, and inflationary monetary policy did substantial harm to this country.Fortunately, the common sense of the American people prevailed when they elected Ronald Reagan (who very nearly won the Republican nomination in 1976) in 1980. While the author does not include the Reagan ascendancy as a major theme of the book, an important subtext clearly emerges. The American people will not tolerate indefinitely the destructive policies of ivory-tower academics and pencil-necked bureaucrats when these policies pose a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Having grown up in the 1970's, I did not have the responsibility of earning a living then, a task that is considerably easier these days as a result of the once-maligned Reaganomics. It is especially gratifying to see someone of my generation make a critical examination of that decade and demonstrate how --in spite of, or perhaps because of, the folly of the 1970's-- America found its way once again. Even the last 12 years of the Bush-Clinton assaults on the economy have had only a limited effect on the economic progress that began in the 1980's.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This was an excellent, fun, witty, and easy to read work on a decade most of us would like to forget. The use of statistics is overwhelming and goes to prove what what the author is trying to get across. I would definatly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand why our society is the way it is today.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of the year
Review: This refreshing new book is less a history of the 1970's than an exploration of some of the forces in American society that came to a head in that "slum of a decade," such as the widespread loss of respect for government, runaway inflation, the abandonment of the South Vietnamese, the cult of the self and the corresponding decline of family and community, and race- and gender-based politics. I think it would have been better to leave "the 70's" out of the book's title, but I recognize that almost any book that purports to be about the 1970's will catch the attention of those of us who came of age in that weird and wonderful era. Frum is an excellent writer, and he provides clear and concise overviews of subjects as complex as the Bretton Woods monetary system, national mental-health policy, the economics of oil and the development of busing as a remedy for school segregation. He pays relatively little attention to popular culture, which is probably a good thing, because most of it was awful. For a fun, intelligent look at the popular culture of the decade, check out Edelstein and McDonugh's lavishly illustrated "The Seventies: From Hot Pants to Hot Tubs," which unfortunately is now hard to find. A central question of "How We Got Here" is whether America's confidence in the 1950's, which completely fell apart in the 1970's, was an anomaly rather than the norm. A related question is whether the events of the 1970's represent America's return to its "normal" state -- contentious, disparate and often violent -- or the beginning of a steady national decline from which we will never fully recover. Frum seems to believe that midcentury stability was the product of, as he calls it, "special circumstances," and that we shouldn't be overly worried about our country's future. I agree with him, but it's also hard to ignore the evidence of national decline that he presents so compellingly in this book.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most enjoyable books I've read in years!
Review: Quite simply, this is one of the best books I've ever read. When I was reading it, I hated to put it down. Frum has organized his book not chronologically, but by broad themes. I think this really makes the book all the more enjoyable. Frum makes both trenchant and witty points about a decade that has been overlooked but in many ways was more radical than the 60s. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: If only Frum hadn't had to re-fight the Cold War again
Review: "~Although Frum is conservative and I'm a cynical, iconoclastic liberal, his book is witty, fascinating, most often correct and politically objective even when his political leanings surface. It's also a primer on how the best intentions can lead to the worst results, like the ethnic splintering that has replaced assimilation. His section on the ramifications of Phil Burton's revolt against the old power structure in Congress is one of those moments when I muse: "Why didn't I think of that?"~"~ Communists were harmless and well meaning.)
Rating:
Summary: Great fun to read
Review: Interesting new perspectives on that odd decade. Well-written, thought provoking and brings back a lot of weird and wonderful stuff we have all forgotten in the intervening 20 or 30 years since the '70's ended. The one thing I'm disappointed he left out of the chapter on the growth of distrust in the competence of government is Skylab -- I vividly remember the parties we threw the night this chunk of metal the size of a doublewide came crashing down to earth (no one knew where it was going to land). There was a brief craze for painting a big bullseye on the roof of your house on the theory that the government was so incompetent that that was the safest way to make sure Skylab DIDN'T land on you. This book is full of great not so trivial trivia like that. To those other reviewers who seem to be hung up on the abandonment of Sourth Vietnam, that is exactly the right word for what happened in 1973-75 as this book makes clear It made a mockery of the 58,000 -- not the 50,000 you keep citing -- American lives earlier sacrificed in a good cause, not to mention the millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians who died and suffered. Anyway, your politics don't belong in a book review any more than mine do. Stick to the topic. This book is well worth reading no matter what your political perspectives are.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading
Review: I am exceedingly grateful for this book. I'm 52 years old and came of age during the 70's. I was a child of my times. I was aware that things were changing, but never had any real idea of the true nature of these changes while they were happening. Like most of my peers, I never went further than the headlines. I accepted the interpretation of the others around me who were equally ignorant of the facts behind those headlines. Now I spend a great deal of my time trying to understand just why I have become so unhappy with what America has become. I liked some of the social changes I saw, but became quite disenchanted with the wanton destruction of all the institutions that I know are essential to a successful civilization. Marriage, religion, masculine and feminine ethics, law, respect for legitimate authority, families, education, morality......., the list goes on and on. All these things were smashed beyond recognition without the slightest thought about how they might be replaced. This book fills in the blanks. What was the real meaning of the Pentagon papers? Why were the Carter years such a failure of leadership? What part did the government play in the madness? What were the political facts behind Vietnam? These and many more questions are touched upon in easily readable form. The second from the last paragraph of the book sums up the general tone rather well: "Americans are a people of anxious conscience, and they do not seem very pleased with themselves these days. They see corruption in office and their fellow-citizens apparently acquiescing in it; they see pervasive child-neglect, disrespect for legitimate authority, quotas in the workplace, gruesome crimes in the quietest towns, misspellings in the letters form their children's teachers, smut on the airwaves, the hardening misery of the poorest of the poor. They lack the vocabulary to express their misgivings. How can one judge if one has been taught all one's life that it is wicked to be judgmental? But rendering the misgivings inarticulate does not make them go away. So let's be articulate. It is not true that things in general were better half a century ago. Things in many respects were worse----more militaristic, less innovative, more statist, less tolerant, more unionized, less humane, more prejudiced. Nostalgia for the past would be misplaced, and even if it were not, nostalgia is the weakest and most useless of emotions, the narcotic of the defeated and the helpless. But if things in general were not better, some things in particular were. It was better when people showed more loyalty to family and country, better when they read more and talked about themselves less, better when they restrained their sexuality, better when professors and curators were unafraid to uphold high intellectual standards, better when immigrants were expected to Americanize promptly, better when not every sorrow begat a lawsuit."
|
