The 1970s demonstrated, more clearly than in any other postwar decade, the limits of American power abroad. After the longest war in American history, the United States was unable to win in Vietnam and settled in 1973 for a peace treaty that...

Activism in the 1960s may have been conducted by fewer than 5 percent of college students nationwide, but the principles of inclusion and equality of opportunity these protesters espoused became the status quo in education during the 1970s. Some...

The decade of the 1970s was in many ways a continuation of the late 1960s. The liberals and radicals of the 1960s inspired the social-justice crusades or liberation movements of the 1970s. There was new freedom for women, homosexuals, Native...

The decline of membership and influence of Mainline Protestant denominations continued in the 1970s. Conservatives charged that these denominations had lost their fire, and consequently their membership, to more committed groups. Perhaps more people...

After the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, the 1970s in general seemed a less exciting decade. In the media, however, things were definitely exciting, particularly as the concerns of the preceding decade affected everyday practice in...

Law, courts, and lawyers played increasing roles in the central social and political conflicts of the 1970s. Concerns about rising crime rates, the rights of the accused, and the death penalty were key social issues. Growing prison populations and...

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The decade of the 1970s was a meeting ground for two opposing attitudes about science and technology: optimism that science could bring progress and prosperity and radical mistrust of its power to change life for the better. In the 1950s there had...

The 1970s began where the 1960s left off: restless, critical of the status quo, questioning traditional authority and social hierarchies, and flamboyantly expressive. The social upheavals that swept the country in the mid 1960s — civil rights,...

In 1976, journalist Tom Wolfe (1931–) coined the term "The Me Decade" to describe the 1970s. It was not a compliment. In the eyes of many, Americans in the 1970s retreated from the political and social changes they had pursued in...

Nadine Gordimer's novel A Guest of Honor is published. Yukio Mishima's novel Runaway Horses is published. Graham Greene's novel Travels with My Aunt is published. John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman is published. Marcel Ophuls's...

Serious readers in the 1970s had good reason to be confused. Critics surveyed a publishing world that seemed no longer to be producing great works of literature, and they proclaimed that the novel was dead. What they might have said, however, was that...

When journalist Tom Wolfe (1931–) surveyed the changes that had swept America in the past few years, he gave the decade a label that has stuck: "The Me Decade." Wolfe and others noticed that the dominant concerns of most people had...

Despite the bell-bottom and platform-shoe revival of the early 2000s, it is unlikely that anyone will remember the 1970s for the quality of its innovations in fashion. In fact, many of the favorite fashions of the 1970s are now remembered with humor....

The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. In Western cities primarily , the focus shifted from the social activism of the sixties to social activities for one's own pleasure: drug use, all-night dancing at...