From the Watergate scandal to protests that finally brought an end to the Vietnam War, plus major advancements in women's rights, gay rights, and the environmental movement, the 1970s was a decade marked by political and social change. In terms of popular culture, we can thank the 1970s for Star Wars, disco, The Godfather, bell bottoms, Fleetwood Mac, Ms. magazine, and so much more.
Whether you were alive in the 1970s or born decades after, you're probably aware of the bigger moments that defined the years from 1970 to 1979. Eager to know more? Groovy! Here are some of the best books about the 1970s and some of the most popular bestsellers published during the 1970s to give you a better look at this fab, fascinating, and influential era.
Listens that capture the 1970s
Sparked by a glimpse of the chemistry between former Fleetwod Mac bandmates Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham during a 1997 live performance of “Landslide,” bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid set out to write a fictional version of their bittersweet love story. Following the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their dazzling lead singer—and revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup—Daisy Jones & The Six is written as an oral history, making it a book that’s meant to be listened to. Featuring Jennifer Beals as Daisy and Pablo Schreiber as Billy, a full cast of talented performers captures all the drama of rock-and-roll, drugs, and doomed love, 70’s style.
Nothing consumed and divided America in the early 1970s like the Vietnam War. In The Women, celebrated author Kristin Hannah explores this conflict through the coming-of-age story of Frances “Frankie” McGrath. At 20, Frankie enlists in the Army Nurse Corps with dreams of serving her country and becoming a hero. As soon as she lands in Vietnam, she is hit by the chaos and devastation of war. She survives, only to return home to a nation that spits on her service and a military that refuses to acknowledge nurses as combat veterans. The remarkable Julia Whelan won a 2025 Audie Award for Best Fiction Narrator for bringing Frankie to life and shedding light on how nurses, like many of the wounded soldiers they treated, experienced post-war disillusionment and PTSD.
American singer-songwriter Patti Smith became an icon of the New York City punk rock movement when she released her 1975 debut album, Horses. And she remains an important figure in music, poetry, and literature to this day. In Patti Smith at the Minetta Lane, you'll hear Smith's story in her own words and voice. This Audible Original audio interweaves reflections and memories from Smith's life with beloved songs from her catalog, performed life by Smith along with Tony Shanahan and her son and daughter, Jackson and Jesse Paris Smith.
Fueled by disco, funk, fashion, and drugs, nightlife was hot in the 1970s, especially in New York City. Nightclubs like The Limelight, Tunnel, Club USA, and Palladium were known across the world, and there was one man who stood behind them all: Peter Gatien, influential owner, party promoter, and czar of the scene. The Club King unfolds Gatien's story in his own words, from the Manhattan nightclub movement of the 1970s to the excess of the 1980s to the crackdown of the 1990s.
The celebrated folk singer and Hall of Fame songwriter opens his audio memoir by proclaiming, "I’m James Taylor, and I’m a professional autobiographer." Revisiting the first 21 years of his life and breakout success, the six-time Grammy winner takes us through the moments and the music that defined his career, with a nod to a song released in 1970, "Fire and Rain." Break Shot combines storytelling, music, and performance to create a unique listening experience, bolstered by Taylor's exclusive renditions of his songs, including an unreleased recording of the beloved hymn "Jerusalem."
Narrated by the author, this fascinating memoir follows Ann Hood’s adventures as a TWA flight attendant. In 1978, Hood, fresh out of college, set out to travel the world—and make a living in the process. At TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy, she learned how to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, administer oxygen, and mix proper cocktails. In the air, she walked more than a million miles in high heels and kept poised and calm through turbulence and crises. In Fly Girl, Hood captures the excitement of the golden age of air travel and reveals how, despite its roots in sexist standards, the job empowered her.
Chasing Phil is a gripping true story with all the elements of a topnotch thriller, set in the glamorous side of the 1970s. In 1977, J.J. Wedick and Jack Brennan were two young FBI agents about to embark on the agency's first white-collar undercover sting operation. Their target: Phil Kitzer, a globe-trotting con man. The agents followed Kitzer from Cleveland to Miami to Hawaii, from Frankfurt to the Bahamas, meeting various members of his crime syndicate and people he had swindled every step of the way. Wedick and Brennan played the role of Kitzer's protégés and co-conspirators. While doing so, they came to respect and care for their target, even as they knew his arrest was drawing near.
The 1970s marked the start of a renaissance for the horror genre. In Paperbacks from Hell, bestselling horror author Grady Hendrix gives listeners a tour through the horror paperback novels of the '70s and '80s, featuring killer commentary and witty insight into the wild stories told during this horror boom. This listen covers well-known authors from the period, including V.C. Andrews, who is famous for her 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic. Hendrix also highlights forgotten authors, weighing in on which of their novels are lost treasures and which are perhaps best left in obscurity.
Known for his Audie Award winning oral history of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky, noted journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff explores the full scope of the decade's defining political scandal in this riveting listen. The story begins in 1971 with the Pentagon Papers and culminates with the resignation of disgraced President Richard M. Nixon. Drawing on newly public documents and transcripts, Watergate tells it all, from the perspective of the investigators, intelligence officers, intrepid journalists, and informants who were there just as it happened.
As reporters for The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the most shocking and consequential presidential scandal of the 20th century. First published just months before Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974, All the President’s Men recounts their landmark investigation, starting with what seemed like a simple burglary at the Democratic headquarters and gradually uncovering a political espionage program orchestrated by high-ranking Republicans. Actor Richard Poe captures the real-life drama of this political detective story and its cast of characters, including the mysterious source “Deep Throat.” Beyond a riveting work of history, the 50th Anniversary Edition features a new foreword on what Watergate means today.
This inspiring Audible Original tells the widely overlooked story of a groundbreaking public health program created during the darkest days of the Vietnam War. Under the Doctor’s Draft program, a group of brilliant and dedicated medical professionals arrived at the National Institutes of Health, ready to serve their country. As coauthor, narrator, and legendary M.A.S.H. actor Alan Alda reveals, the members of this program—including a young Anthony Fauci—went on to become some of the country's most respected physician scientists. Soldiers of Science recognizes their accomplishments.
Do you want to know the truth about the events that led to 914 people drinking an elixir of Flavor Aid and cyanide on November 18, 1978? An Audible Original podcast, Escape from Jonestown takes a deep dive with one remarkable former member of Jonestown, the so-called "utopian" society and notorious cult. Tim Carter was a part of the Jonestown inner circle, but before he got completely sucked into Jim Jones's mass suicide plot, Carter fled into the Guyanese jungle. This is his staggering survival story, and each moment will leave you on the edge of your seat.
Iconic books published in the 1970s
Once upon a time (in 1973, to be precise), William Goldman gave the world a swashbuckling fantasy with all the fairy-tale staples: a beautiful young maiden, a brave young hero, a scheming villain, and, of course, a happy ending—along with "rodents of unusual size" and assorted strange characters, including an embittered swordsman whose name is Inigo Montoya. Narrated by the late, great Rob Reiner, who directed the beloved 1987 movie version, The Princess Bride is a story of romance, revenge, and good-natured silliness that continues to delight.
The inspiration for a Tony Award-winning musical, recently revived at Lincoln Center, Ragtime made its publishing debut in 1975. Set in New York just after the turn of the 20th century, this historical saga follows three families—a white affluent businessman, his wife, and two sons in the suburbs; a Black ragtime musician from Harlem and his girlfriend; and a Russian-Jewish immigrant peddler and his young daughter—whose lives become intertwined. Throughout the novel, which E. L. Doctorow narrates himself, actual historic events and figures, including Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, Emiliano Zapata, and Harry Houdini, add context and drama. Exploring issues from immigration to racism to political violence, Ragtime continues to strike a chord with diverse listeners.
Marking Toni Morrison's impressive debut as a novelist, The Bluest Eye was published in 1970 and went on to win the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel tells the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl living in America who fervently prays for her brown eyes to turn blue, so she can be seen as beautiful and valued by others. Young Pecola's life is nightmarishly difficult, and she imagines that if only she could have blue eyes, in a country where blue-eyed, blond-haired, white-skinned children are perceived as precious and loved, her life would be different. This touching and heartbreaking story is narrated by Morrison herself, adding an additional layer of depth.
First published in 1977, this chilling story of of supernatural forces (and other demons) cemented Stephen King as one of the horror genre's most important authors. King's third novel and unique take on the haunted house trope, The Shining is set in the Overlook Hotel, an isolated resort in the Colorado Rockies. Jack Torrance takes on a job overseeing the hotel during the months when it is closed, hoping for a fresh start and chance to focus on his writing. When he moves in with his wife and young son Danny, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him within the hotel's halls. But Danny, gifted with a clairvoyant power referred to as "the Shining," gets the sense that something sinister is happening inside the Overlook. House of Cards actor Campbell Scott narrates, capturing Jack's unraveling and the eeriness of it all.
Nearly 50 years ago, Douglas Adams revealed the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything in a captivating sci-fi trek that became a mega-selling pop-culture classic. As wacky and intriguing as ever, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy follows Englishman Arthur Dent as he wakes up to find that Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a space highway. Spanning the galaxy, adventures with aliens, super computers, and a perpetually sad robot named Marvin ensue. Along the way, Adams provide pithy commentary on time and space, digital watches, ballpoint pens, and potted plants. Stephen Fry narrates it all with appropriate hilarity.
Speculative fiction was a white-, male-dominated field in 1979 when a Black woman writer published a novel that rocked the genre. Octavia E. Butler went on to win Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards, and become the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Combining slave memoir, historical fiction, and time travel fantasy, Kindred tells the complex story of an African American woman living in California in 1976 and her ancestors. While celebrating her 26th birthday, Dana is abruptly pulled back through time into antebellum Maryland. She saves a white boy from drowning and is then threatened at gunpoint before she gets pulled forward to the present. Through the course of the novel, Dana continues to go back and forth in time, encountering the same white man in different moments of his life. Soon, she realizes who he is—and why her very existence depends on keeping this young slaveholder alive.
A 1971 novel by pioneering gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas follows Raoul Duke—a character inspired by Thompson himself—and his attorney as they set out for Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race. But their real mission on this trip, Raoul Duke insists, is to find the American Dream. Fueled by every drug imaginable, the two embark on a psychedelic journey that critiques the ridiculousness of American consumerism and greed. Audie Award–winning narrator Ron McLarty does an amazing job portraying the humor and the absurdism of this unique, genre-defining story.
An iconic and widely beloved work of fiction, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the defining works of the Magical Realist movement. This novel tells the story of many generations of the Buendía family and their connection to the rise and fall of Macondo, a mythical town in Latin America. Written by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published in Spanish in 1967. It made its English debut in 1970, translated by Gregory Rabassa. The novel's influence throughout the 1970s led to Márquez receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The audiobook is performed by accomplished narrator John Lee.
In her groundbreaking 1976 memoir, Maxine Hong Kingston weaves autobiography, history, folklore, and fantasy to tell her story of growing up as the daughter of Chinese immigrants in mid-20th century California. Capturing her experience of navigating two cultures and belonging to neither, The Woman Warrior continues to resonate with not only first-generation Americans but anyone who has been made to feel like an outsider because of their ethnic background. Named a Disney Legend for voicing Mulan, accomplished Chinese American actress Ming-Na brings Kingston's story to life in a performance described by Audible listeners as "absolutely superb."
Originally published in 1973, Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was controversial at the time for its portrayal of female sexuality and its role in the development of second-wave feminism. The novel, which has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, tells the story of Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing, a 29-year-old married woman and poet. While on a trip to Vienna with her husband, Isadora decides to fly free and indulge in her sexual fantasies. The audiobook version of this feminist classic is narrated by Hope Davis, whose performance perfectly captures the mix of vulnerability, yearning, and desperation Isadora brings to her search for identity and fulfillment.
Picking up where Bram Stoker left off, Anne Rice's Gothic chiller lets us in on the life, transformation, and survival story of a vampire from Louisiana. Starting with the night he departed his human existence as a young heir to a great plantation, our protagonist describes how he was lured into the realm of the immortals. Soon after, he set out on a journey from New Orleans to Transylvania in a desperate attempt to escape his master—the magnetic, sinister vampire Lestat—and his own hunger. First published in 1976, Interview with the Vampire spurred a fascination that lives on. In addition to a 1994 movie starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, the novel inspired a hit TV series of the same name, which began streaming in 2022, as well as shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Vampire Diaries. Audible Hall of Fame narrator Simon Vance lends his voice to this vampire classic.
