Abstract

This past summer, three new histories of the 1970s came out—Laura Kalman’s Right Star Rising, Judith Stein’s Pivotal Decade, and Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive. Why this new interest? These books all make the case that the 1970s marked the birth of the post–New Deal country that we live in today. What they mean by this may come as a bit of a surprise. Many historians have treated the 1970s as the moment when conservatism finally crossed into the mainstream of American politics. These books, however, emphasize the internal tensions and dilemmas that confronted American liberalism in the decade, more than the rise of the Right. What really defines the 1970s, for these three authors, is the challenge the old ideals of New Deal liberalism faced during the decade, in particular the ideas of the progressive working class and the possibilities of government activism. The result, they suggest, was a deepening political pessimism throughout the entire society—a loss of confidence in the potential to act collectively to transform society for the better that has shaped American liberalism as much as American conservatism today.

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