The 1970s

A wide-ranging cultural and political history that will forever redefine a misunderstood decade, Stayin' Alive is prize-winning historian Jefferson Cowie's remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s. In this edgy and incisive book, Cowie, with "an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), reveals America's fascinating path from rising incomes and optimism of the New Deal to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present.

Keith Moon wasn’t just The Who’s drummer—he was their chaos engine, their comic relief, and their most volatile liability. Known for explosive performances and even more explosive offstage antics, Moon’s life was a whirlwind of fame, destruction, brilliance, and heartbreak. Keith Moon: The Last 24 Hours is an unflinching rock and roll biography that reconstructs the final day of this iconic musician's life, diving deep into the real events that led to his tragic death on September 7, 1978, at the age of 32. This book provides a blow-by-blow account of Moon’s last hours, based ...

Shout It Out Loud is a serious examination of the circumstance and serendipity that fused the creation of the band's seminal work, Destroyer - including the band's arduous ascent to the unexpected smash hit Alive!, the ensuing lawsuits between its management and its label, the pursuit of the hot, young producer, a grueling musical "boot camp", the wildly creative studio abandon, the origins behind an iconic cover, the era's most outlandish tour, and the unlikely string of hit singles.

By early 1977, New York City was in the grip of hysteria caused by a murderer dubbed "Son of Sam". And on a sweltering night in July, a citywide power outage touched off an orgy of looting and arson that led to the largest mass arrest in the city's history. As the turbulent year wore on, the city became absorbed in two epic battles: the fight between Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo for the city's mayoralty.

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 In a Different 1975… Superpower relations breakdown and a nuclear war all but annihilates the Soviet Union and devastates the United States. 100 million Americans are dead. After Washington is destroyed, a smalltown judge delivers the oath of office to Vice President Rockefeller. Surviving American forces on land, sea and in the air await orders from the new president. Americans across the nation climb out of the rubble looking for a homeland that no longer exists. In surviving capitals across the globe, governments ponder the implications of a world without ...

On his second combat tour, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition.

Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in The Big Time, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade—the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning of athletes’ gaining a sense of autonomy for their own careers, integration becoming—at least within sports—more of the rule than the exception, and the social revolution that brought females more decisively into sports, as athletes, coaches, executives, and spectators.

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.

Sid Vicious: One Junkie, One Knife, and No Fuckin’ Future is a raw, unapologetic look into the short, explosive life—and death—of punk rock’s most infamous icon. Told in a brutally honest, darkly sardonic voice, this book mixes biography with postmortem narration to deliver an unfiltered account of Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols, and the chaos he embodied. From the gritty streets of 1970s London to the bloodstained floors of the Chelsea Hotel, this is more than a music biography—it’s a ghost’s confessional. Readers are taken inside the rise and collapse of the Sex ...

1975: The Untold Story Behind a Real UFO Invasion The Cold War Wasn’t Our Only Threat… Autumn, 1975. Across the United States, America’s most heavily guarded military installations—home to nuclear weapons, B-52 bombers, intercontinental missile systems, and elite Strategic Air Command teams—were suddenly and inexplicably invaded by unidentified aerial objects. They came in silence. They evaded radar, jammed communications, hovered over nuclear storage depots, and vanished at impossible speeds. They triggered full-scale alerts, launched intercepts, and plunged entire bases into ...

When we think of '70s cinema, we think of classics like The Godfather and Taxi Driver...but the riches found in the overlooked B-movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact "unlock the secrets of the times".

Levon is the dazzling, epic biography of Levon Helm - the beloved, legendary drummer and singer of The Band.

Former teen idol Leif Garrett bares his soul for the first time ever, revealing his deepest secrets about the extraordinary highs and devastating lows he has survived over the years.

The Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters was not only the band’s best-selling album at over seven million copies sold, it was also a powerfully influential release, both musically and culturally, one whose influence continues to be profoundly felt.

During the 1970s, American foreign policy faced a predicament of clashing imperatives - US decision makers, already struggling to maintain stability and devise strategic frameworks to guide the exercise of American power during the Cold War, found themselves hampered by the emergence of dilemmas that would come to a head in the post-Cold War era. Their choices proved to be of enormous consequence for the development of American foreign policy in the final decades of the twentieth century and beyond.

From 1976 to 1978, the Cornell men's lacrosse team went on a tear. Winning two national championships and posting an overall record of 42-1, the Big Red, coached by Richie Moran, were the class of the NCAA game. Christian Swezey tells the story of the rise of this dominant lacrosse program. Pulling from interviews with more than ninety former coaches and players from Cornell and its rivals, We Showed Baltimore paints a vivid picture of lacrosse in the 1970s and how Moran and the Big Red helped create the game of today.

In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion’s most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves.

There are many things 12-year-old Clover Blue isn't sure of: his exact date of birth, his name before he was adopted into the Saffron Freedom Community, or who his first parents were. What he does know with certainty is that among this close-knit, nature-loving group, he is happy. Here, everyone is family, regardless of their disparate backgrounds - surfer, midwife, Grateful Dead groupie, Vietnam deserter. But despite his loyalty to the commune and its guru-like founder Goji, Blue grapples with invisible ties toward another family - the one he doesn't remember.

Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.

With the world in turmoil during the past twenty years, it is now clear that one generation had the character and the skills to face up to those challenges. This book is about them, Generation X. An overlooked and forgotten generation, brought up when the world was forever changing and was to play an important role in keeping everything together, when all seemed lost. Through its pages it explores the historic events that occurred when Xers were growing up as well as their education, style and entertainment which shaped them into adults. How they were influenced, and how they also ...