The Seventies Unplugged - A Kaleidoscopic Look At A Violent Decade

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If the 1960s was the decade of peace, love & understanding, the 1970s was the decade of glitter & glam rock. Or was it? Gerard De Groot peels away the polyester to examine what really happened in a decade that began with the death of Jimi Hendrix & ended with Ronald Reagan in the White House & Margaret Thatcher in 10 Downing Street. Some commentators have written off the Seventies as a period in which nothing happened, yet politically it was a time of great hope. Dictatorial regimes ended in Portugal, Spain, Nicaragua, Rhodesia & Greece. Accord between nations was established at Camp David, Peking, Moscow, Geneva & Brussels. For feminists, environmentalists & homosexuals, the Seventies was the decade of hope. In cultural terms, it brought the Sydney Opera House, Monty Python, Annie Hall, David Hockney & M.A.S.H. The music, with or without ABBA, was simply brilliant. But it was also a time of quite extraordinary violence & as the decade continued, the bloodshed & the hate came to dominate, whether in Jonestown, Belfast, Palestine or Cambodia. & while the violence of nations is a constant throughout history, in the 1970s ordinary people seemed to surrender to violence with frightening ease. As the Sixties chickens came home to roost, the Seventies became an era when dreams died, hope was thwarted, problems long ignored finally exploded, & optimism repeatedly crushed gave way to frustration. Incisive, iconoclastic & hugely entertaining " The Seventies Unplugged" is popular history at its best.