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Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right by Dominic Sandbrook
guojing's review
4.0
America in the 1970s. What a time to be alive.
Having grown up on 1970s movies and TV, I am by no means a stranger to this strange era, despite having been born a decade and a half after its end. But strange indeed this period was. There were riots over The Illiad and Crime and Punishment that saw school buses being shot at and schools blown up by crazed Christian fanatics; children were being bused from one side of the city to another just to make the numbers of black and white kids in the school look more appropriate to extremely color-conscious "progressives"; and America lost a ridiculous war.
Other than the biographical information on Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, along with the details of some of the issues discussed in this book, nothing was new to me. Even the Textbook Wars I've long been familiar with. But reading them in this narrative, connected with outside events, as well as with the culture (which I am so familiar with on its own), events came alive. Some issues, however, were frequently alluded to - Chappaquiddick, Panama Canal, Camp David - but never given any description, which was upsetting - Chappaquiddick and the Panama Canal controversy being largely oblivescent to my millennial memory.
I imagine that this book had quite the bias. I say that because I really don't know enough about Carter to confirm that he had a good side, but Sandbrook leaves me with the feeling that Carter was the most evil, delusional, self-interested person to ever call himself a Democrat. Indeed, after reading the first of the chapters on Carter, I went to my parents and announced, "Trump is Carter! He isn't all that novel after all!" Now, thanks to this, I am going to have to scout out a more neutral view of this crazy fellow, see if he seems so crazy after all.
So, in the end, I am very glad to have read this book. I am almost tempted to read his thousand-page history of Britain in the 1960s or the other thousand-page history of Britain in the 1970s. Surely the history of the United States in the period from 1974 to 1980 deserves a thousand pages far more so than does a history of Britain, but the author is a Brit, so what can you expect?
Having grown up on 1970s movies and TV, I am by no means a stranger to this strange era, despite having been born a decade and a half after its end. But strange indeed this period was. There were riots over The Illiad and Crime and Punishment that saw school buses being shot at and schools blown up by crazed Christian fanatics; children were being bused from one side of the city to another just to make the numbers of black and white kids in the school look more appropriate to extremely color-conscious "progressives"; and America lost a ridiculous war.
Other than the biographical information on Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, along with the details of some of the issues discussed in this book, nothing was new to me. Even the Textbook Wars I've long been familiar with. But reading them in this narrative, connected with outside events, as well as with the culture (which I am so familiar with on its own), events came alive. Some issues, however, were frequently alluded to - Chappaquiddick, Panama Canal, Camp David - but never given any description, which was upsetting - Chappaquiddick and the Panama Canal controversy being largely oblivescent to my millennial memory.
I imagine that this book had quite the bias. I say that because I really don't know enough about Carter to confirm that he had a good side, but Sandbrook leaves me with the feeling that Carter was the most evil, delusional, self-interested person to ever call himself a Democrat. Indeed, after reading the first of the chapters on Carter, I went to my parents and announced, "Trump is Carter! He isn't all that novel after all!" Now, thanks to this, I am going to have to scout out a more neutral view of this crazy fellow, see if he seems so crazy after all.
So, in the end, I am very glad to have read this book. I am almost tempted to read his thousand-page history of Britain in the 1960s or the other thousand-page history of Britain in the 1970s. Surely the history of the United States in the period from 1974 to 1980 deserves a thousand pages far more so than does a history of Britain, but the author is a Brit, so what can you expect?
johnnygamble's review
4.0
very similar to Rick Perlstein - less sarcastic, but equally entertaining. I learned more than I want to admit.
sophronisba's review against another edition
4.0
A political/social/cultural history of the U.S. in the 1970s. I liked it quite a lot. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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