1980s

What "Crackhead" Really Meant in 1980s America

by Donovan X. Ramsey

The memories of politicians and police have been allowed to dominate our understanding of the emergence of crack cocaine in the 1980s. A new book seeks to elevate the voices of urban Black Americans and others who experienced it directly and still live with its effects.

The Real Story Behind "Cocaine Bear"

The real story of "Pablo Escobear" involves far less action by the bear and much more by a ring of smugglers during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. 

Greg Ginn, SST Records, and the Rise of SoCal Punk

"In its 1980s heyday, SST released at least a dozen canonical rock albums that were notable for their rejection of convention."

Republicans are Reviving the 1980s Crack Panic; People will Die as a Result

Harm reduction policies are evidence-based and proven to reduce the negative impacts of drug abuse, which makes the effort to turn them into a culture war particularly discouraging. 

He Was Convicted of Raping Alice Sebold. Then the Case Unraveled.

The recent exoneration of Anthony Broadwater calls for revisiting the context of writer Alice Sebold's sexual assault, including the state of urban America, the climate of racism and the politics of crime in the early 1980s. 

Muscle Motion:

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

A 1983 home workout video featuring the Chippendales dancers reflected the convergence of multiple cultural changes in home video, fitness culture, pornography, and the mainstreaming of female desire. Everything has a history!

I Want My Mutually Assured Destruction – Teaching the Cold War with Classic Music Videos

by Tom Nichols

Rock videos from the early days of MTV are a surprisingly effective tool for explaining the nuclear fear of the Cold War era to students who never experienced it. 

Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis

Washington journalist Karen Tumulty writes that Nancy Reagan worked against the demands of social conservatives to ask her husband's administration to pay attention to the AIDS crisis, but her efforts weren't enough. 

The Original Shock of AIDS in “It’s a Sin”

The British show "It's a Sin" reconstructs the emergence of AIDS in London through the story of a group of flatmates working to reconcile fear and affirmation. 

A Pacific NW Magazine Story from 1984 Predicted what Life in Seattle Would be Like Now. It was not Completely Wrong

A 1984 speculative article was prescient about environmental and economic developments in greater Seattle. 

Former Democratic power broker James A. Johnson dies at 76

James Johnson's business, policy and philanthropy resume led a colleague to call him "the chairman of the universe." 

Eddie Van Halen, Virtuoso of the Rock Guitar, Dies at 65

The influential rock guitarist died today at age 65 after a battle with cancer.

“Entrepreneurial Greed” — A Review Of Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, And The Decade Of Greed

David Farber's book examines the entrepreneurial culture of crack cocaine and how the drug trade meshed with Reagan-era changes in urban political economy.

Remember Punk Rock? Probably Not…: The Real Culture War of 1980s America

by Kevin Mattson

Digging beneath the aesthetics of punk to find its politics, Kevin Mattson's new book finds a counterculture of suburban youths who identified the unrestrained capitalism of the Reagan era as the true nihilism threatening America.

How Mask Fights Echo Seat Belt Fights: ‘The Right To Be Splattered All Over Their Windshields’

Elizabeth Dole’s fight for seat belt laws in the 1980s inspired the sort of rhetoric and division America is seeing today over government mandates to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

When American Politics Turned Toxic (Review)

Julian Zelizer argues that Newt Gingrich made the media unwitting accomplices to his partisan crusade.

An Unlikely Bohemia: Athens, Georgia, in Reagan's America

by Grace Elizabeth Hale

Athens kids built the first important small-town American music scene and the key early site of what would become alternative or indie culture.

“I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility”

Today’s 40-year-olds on the lives they’ve led, and now this.

As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity

Previously unseen documents from a Soviet archive show how hard Mr. Sanders worked to find a sister city in Russia when he was a mayor in the 1980s. Moscow saw a chance for propaganda.

Jim Cullen: Review of George Packer's "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)

Coming in at over 400 hefty pages, The Unwinding offers a granular, empirical confirmation, at the level of lived experience, of what many of us experience as the defining perception of our time. And that is that we are moving backward, that the hard-won gains of the welfare state -- a story whose lineaments Richard Hofstadter sketched in The Age of Reform (1955) and whose trajectory extended into the Great Society -- are unraveling at an accelerating rate.