When America Roared - by Jonathan Kaufman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The panoramic story of the 1980s, exploring the triumphs and failures of the decade that shaped the 21st century more than any other, from a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who witnessed the transformations firsthand

In January 1980, America seemed broken. Inflation raged. Interest rates topped 20 percent. Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with impunity. Japan was eating American manufacturing alive. Three broadcast networks controlled what Americans watched. The idea of a Black president seemed fantasy. China had been closed for 30 years. The Berlin Wall seemed permanent.

Ten years later, everything had changed. The economy was booming. The Soviet Empire was collapsing. American businesses were competitive again.

In this immersive, character-driven narrative, Jonathan Kaufman lays bare the contending ideologies--and people--who battled for control of business, media and politics in the 1980s, shaping the way we live today. As Ronald Reagan and conservatives pummeled the Democratic party, as Jack Welch redefined what it meant to be the leader of a Fortune 500 company, and as deregulation spearheaded by Mark Fowler allowed television to become the hundreds of specialized and partisan channels we watch now, the groundwork was laid for our current economic and political conflicts. The decade also launched social and political movements whose victories transformed the country. Karen Nussbaum and Jane Fonda galvanized a struggling women's movement, Evan Wolfson spearheaded the gay community's legal fight against a hostile government, and Barack Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer in Chicago--all building long-lasting movements whose success progressives can learn from today.

From pivotal moments in board rooms and court rooms, to cultural touchstones like the birth of hip hop and of conservative talk radio, as well as the author's eyewitness experiences in Tiananmen Square and Prague, When America Roared is the riveting story of how the 1980s built the world we live in, for better and for worse. It is the decade that made us--and the key to understanding where we go from here.

About the Author

Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose long list of bylines includes The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News. His wide ranging work has covered topics such as labor, local activism, racism and job discrimination, and corporate tax dodging, and has also been recognized with the Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award, and the Columbia University School of Journalism, among others. He is the author of The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China; A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe and Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.