In The Zeitgeist

I recently read The Seventies by Bruce J. Shulman, a history of the decade just after I was born, published in 2001. I call the 70s the decade of my childhood, not the decade of my youth, which I would say was the 80s. But my generation grew up fast, and I remember feeling all grown up in the late 70s, and picking up on the free-wheeling energy of the times. But possibly all teens feel this way.

Specific events of the Seventies that I remember include the Nixon Presidency – but only having a vague sense that he was strongly disliked. I was a very young child during his second term. I remember the Bicentennial and the Tall Ships, President Carter, the Three Mile Island disaster, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran-Hostage crisis.

I remember disco, and even dancing to the contemporary disco hits when I was in junior high school. But I was really more into progressive rock, and nerdy stuff like Dungeons & Dragons (I started playing in 1979, even before the kids on Stranger Things). And I remember being infected by the rebellious, free-thinking spirit of the age.

Which takes me to what I thought was the most remarkable thing about this history of the decade, which is how well it aligns with what Strauss-Howe generational theory says about the time period. Any long-time follower of this blog knows how much credence I give to the generational approach. Schulman doesn’t specifcally discuss generations, beyond acknowledging that the Baby Boomers were the young people during the 1970s. But a lot of his analysis fits with Strauss-Howe.

In Strauss-Howe theory, the 70s fit inside a social era they call an Awakening, whose dates they give as 1964-1984. Schulman also allows that the spirit of the 70s extended beyond the exact years of the decade, giving his boundaries as 1969-1984.

An Awakening era is characterized by spritual fervor, new movements that question existing values and institutions, and a shift in focus from the collective to the individual, and from the public to the private. All of this is captured by Schulman, including how the 1970s saw increasing distrust in and revolt against government, culminating in the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.

This book came out not long after Strauss and Howe published Generations and The Fourth Turning, but Schulman doesn’t seem to be aware of their existence. Which makes it all the more fascinating that he comes to the same conclusions as them.

My goodreads review follows.

The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A definitive look at the decade of my childhood, the 1970s. Author Bruce J. Schulman, a professor of American history, is older than me, but not by much, and would also have lived through this decade during his youth. The book covers developments in politics and culture, and how the transformations of the 1970s led to the social regime current at the time of the book’s publication in 2001, just at the eve of the next transformative era.

The key points that Schulman repeats throughout his book are that the 1970s mark a shift in priority from society to the individual, and in trust from the public sphere to the private sphere. What’s fascinating to me is that this observation aligns with the framework of Strauss and Howe generations theory, including the time range he gives to what might be called the “long seventies,” 1969-1984. Schulman doesn’t explicitly discuss generational effects, except to acknowledge the existence and importance of the baby boomers (his own generation).

The books has nine chapters, covering a variety of topics. Nixon gets his own chapter, as his Presidency marks two important political turning points: the beginning of the disempowerment of the New Deal liberal establishment, and the planting of the seeds of deep public distrust in government that would blossom ten years later during the Reagan Revolution. Schulman makes a great point about Watergate: that the lesson Americans learned from it was not that Nixon was corrupt, but that all government was corrupt. One can easily see that this belief haunts us to this very day (I write this in 2025).

Trends covered in other chapters include the dawn of identity politics and the end of the 1960s-era dreams of integrationism, the shift in political and cultural power from the Northeastern United States to the South and West, the emergence of new styles of film and music, and the rise of new religious movements. The 1970s saw a relaxation of norms and standards and a turning away from traditional values, and a corresponding new brand of conservatism that developed in opposition to these trends.

As already noted, running through this decade was a society-wide movement away from the public and collective and toward the private and individual. It culminated in the Reagan re-election in 1984 and “Morning in America.” At that point the young generations had completed the “hippie to yuppie” transition. Business had replaced government as the trusted engine of productive achievement, and entrepreneurship had replaced political activism as the preferred mode of personal expression and agent of social change.

I was fascinated by Schulman’s claim that the 1970s have a lowly reputation as a dull and meaningless decade. Perhaps, living through it at his age, he recalls the disillusionment coming out of the previous socially charged 1960s. His attitude may be common for his generation; as a slightly younger Gen Xer, I have a warm nostalgia for the era that I think is more typical of my age cohorts. Schulman clearly does have a personal relationship with the time period; this comes out the most in his write-up of the Punk and New Wave genres of rock music, which must have been his favorite growing up.

Overall, this is a nicely written and well-researched account of a social era, though I was a little annoyed that there was so much descriptive text in the end notes that I was constantly flipping back and forth between them and the main text. I suppose Schulman was trying to keep his narrative lean and on point, which he does achieve. A great read, and I do love how well this book aligns with my favorite generational theory.

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