The Eighties: A Reader

By Gilbert T. Sewall

Book Overview

The America of the 1980s is often caricatured as a time of yuppie greed and self-absorption. But what was driving that decades rampant pursuit of individual pleasure? What were the cultural forces... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 020177240X
• ISBN13: 9780201772401
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Important reading

The '80s is decidedly an important decade in twentieth-century America, colored by significant events and social changes, perhaps eclipsed only by the more radical era that preceded it by some twenty years. These collections of essays present a multitude of thoughts, both about and of the '80s, thoughts that both analyzed and constituted the zeitgeist of the decade. From Kristol's serious manifesto of neoconservatism to Wolfe's hilarious ridicule of pretentious public art, The Eighties: A Reader remains an indispensable portrait of a tumultuous time.

Of Narcissisms, Hubris, and Swinging to the Right...

....or the Ray-Gun Reader. Sewall's introductory essay "Revisiting the Eighties" does a perfect job of overviewing what was siginficant in the 80's...starting with the account of the Morgan Stanley broker who was sound bit "Only Suckers would work for less than $200,000 a year" shortly after the Great Market Blowout in '88. It was a decade of greed, true enough, but also because of the messages the era of Reagan 'sublimininably' sent, in retrospect, it became a era of conservatives rallying to a divine purpose which nearest kinship was Nazi-ism, Fascism, Hitlerism...the Chosen Few was drafted to the top, as Tom Wolfe indicated,'Masters of the Universe'. It was Allan Bloom making a case for the return of classical, traditional education in the universities, it was Ben Stein (who, I hear recently is giving away money on a Comedy Channel gameshow) reflecting on how Hollywood created culture through the eyes of people who never, ever had to worry about being able to pay a telephone or a light bill, it was the appearance of AIDS and how the blindsidedness of many, many folks made it more deadly to millions of people, it was PJ O'Rourke and Eric Bogosian's biting satire, it was William Bennett's conservatism. These many essays tell the story of how we inadvertedly came to where we are today. Read the book and rediscover the 80's, it just may help us create better days, now...