The Other Eighties

If Andrew Hunt’s book covers swaths of American popular culture to reveal levels of public dissent, Martin’s book takes a similar approach, but with a particular focus on grassroots activism. Across the U.S., activism took many forms. The Nuclear Freeze campaign, with its simple call to halt the arms race, inspired (in June 1982) the largest public protest in American history. Others rebelled against Reagan’s painfully slow response to even recognize the AIDS epidemic, while on college campuses students rallied against Reagan’s policies towards apartheid-era South Africa. Martin’s examination of how various strands of feminism reacted to the conservative backlash… show more.

Martin tears down the mantra from the right that Ronald Reagan was the best president ever. Or in the words of the historian Gil Troy that Reagan “invented” the eighties. Martin has one chapter on punk rock as a protest movement, but he also places punk in a wider context – with the rise of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, the burgeoning movement against intervention in Central America {“No More Vietnams”), and the Divestment Movement against racial inequality in South Africa. The 1980s become not just the era of Reagan but a moment of protest that was larger than we have… show more.