Abusing the Seventies

The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by Bruce J. Schulman (Free Press, 352 pp., $26)

THE last quarter of Bruce Schulman’s The Seventies consists of a sustained attack on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, which, on-the-ball readers will remember, took place in the 1980s. Much as historians describe a “long 19th century” that runs from the French Revolution to the Great War, Schulman, a professor of history at Boston University, takes as his subject a “long 1970s” that runs from 1968 to 1984. What unites these years, for Schulman, is that they were a period of baleful conservative ascendancy. They began with the election of Richard Nixon—an “underhanded,” “cunning,” “devious” “pathological liar,” for those who’ve never heard of him—and culminated in Nixon’s sugary avatar Ronald Reagan, who “truly lacked sympathy for the downtrodden.”

About the Author

Christopher Caldwell

Mr. Caldwell is a contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books and the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, by Bruce J. Schulman (Free Press, 352 pp., $26)

THE last quarter of Bruce Schulman’s The Seventies consists of a sustained attack on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, which, on-the-ball readers will remember, took place in the 1980s. Much as historians describe a “long 19th century” that runs from the French Revolution to the Great War, Schulman, a professor of history at Boston University, takes as his subject a “long 1970s” that runs from 1968 to 1984. What unites these years, for Schulman, is that they were a period of baleful conservative ascendancy. They began with the election of Richard Nixon—an “underhanded,” “cunning,” “devious” “pathological liar,” for those who’ve never heard of him—and culminated in Nixon’s sugary avatar Ronald Reagan, who “truly lacked sympathy for the downtrodden.”