The Other Eighties

By Bradford Martin,

Book cover of The Other Eighties

Book description

Ronald Reagan looms large in most accounts of the period, encouraging Americans to renounce the activist and liberal politics of the 1960s and '70s and embrace the resurgent conservative wave. But a closer look reveals that a sizable swath of Americans strongly disapproved of Reagan's policies throughout his presidency. With…

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2 authors picked The Other Eighties as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

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…

From William's list on the Cold War in the 1980s.

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…

From Kevin's list on 1980s punk and politics.

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