THE SEVENTIES: THE GREAT SHIFT IN AMERICAN CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS (2012)

In retrospect, Schulman concedes, the '70s can look pretty dismal -- ''an era of bad clothes, bad hair, and bad music impossible to take seriously.'' He sees the post-Watergate years as a fascinating period during which Americans fled from a common public culture into private space, ethnic identity, intensely personal religions, and regional self-assertion -- especially in the Sun Belt, which came to dominate American politics (a new tax-resisting, flag-waving conservatism) and culture (country music, evangelical religion). Schulman, a professor at Boston University, fudges it a little by pushing the '70s into the '80s reign of Reagan, and he brushes past the sexual revolution and relevant developments in other fields at a remove from pop culture and politics. But he does succeed in making the decade of the mullet, the pet rock, and disco look like less of a forgettable mess.