It Seemed Like Nothing Happened - America in the 1970s (Paperback)

Few survivors of the Seventies would subscribe to the words of the title. But for those with only painful memories, Carroll (The Free and the Unfree, 1977) offers a silver-lining review of the decade's developments, predicated on "the emergence of an alternative consciousness." This counterculture romanticism doesn't prevent Carroll from getting most things right - in the political arena or as regards social movements. (His occasional soundings of popular culture tend to be tritely tendentious.) But even so, there are differences. On politics, Carroll supplies an interpretation, even some analysis: "The very traits that had made [Carter] such an attractive candidate in 1976 - images of compassion, homeyness, innocence - contradicted popular expectations of presidential authority. . . ." Nothing remarkable, but sound. Writing of social movements, he regurgitates: "Younger workers, still hoping for a meaningful future, resisted the demands of industrial life, sought more than bread and butter from their jobs." Or: "The celebration of the natural order assumed that Americans could transcend the limits of industrial society, restore some primal attachment to the order of nature." To read Carroll on these trends (also women's "quest for identity," black "self-awareness," "the awakening ethnicity," everyone's "longing for connections") is to relive the decade verbatim. Where he does take a stand is in opposition to Christopher Lasch and other critics of Seventies "narcissism" and "selfishness." And then he writes woozily of "a quest not simply for personal salvation, but more fundamentally for a sense of cosmic connection." Carroll is a trustworthy ear-to-the-groundswells and a generally reliable, quite effective narrator of the main events (Watergate, the two presidential elections). For virtually every happening, he has an apt quote and a pertinent example. As recent past history, this has little to impart today to anyone over 25 or 30 - but the young may take to it, all the more on account of its outlook. (Kirkus Reviews)

"This is the single best book on the 1970s." --Leo Ribuffo, George Washington University "A compelling and persuasive challenge to the journalistic characterization of the '70s as the 'Me Decade.'" --Ruth Rosen, University of California, Davis The title of Peter Carroll's book, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, ironically reveals the message. The decade of the '70s was far from our common impression of the calm following the turbulent '60s. Instead, it was a time filled with dramatic events and changes. In this unique, comprehensive history of the 1970s, we learn about international developments: the war in Cambodia, Nixon's trip to China, the oil embargo and resulting gas shortage, the Mayaguez incident, the Camp David accords, the Iranian capture of the U.S. embassy and the taking of hostages, and the ill-fated rescue mission. All this signaled a decline in American power and influence. We also learn about domestic politics: Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, Haynsworth and Carswell, the Eagleton affair, the rise of ticket splitting, the Saturday night massacre, Nixon's resignation, the conservative shift in the Democratic Party, and the Reagan electoral landslide. Carroll reminds us of tragedies and occasional moments of levity, bringing up the names Patricia Hearst, George Jackson and Angela Davis, Wilbur Mills and the Argentina Firecracker, Wayne Hays and Elizabeth Ray, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Peter N. Carroll has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford University. He is the author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War.

General

Imprint:	Rutgers University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 1990
First published:	1990
Authors:	Peter N. Carroll
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 30mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	450
ISBN-13:	978-0-8135-1538-0
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > General Books > History > General
LSN:	0-8135-1538-6
Barcode:	9780813515380

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