The Nineties

Today's nonfiction post is on The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman. It is 370 pages long and is published by Penguin Press. The cover is a clear plastic phone on a white background. The intended reader is someone who like essays, interested in near history, and re-examining their memories. There is mild foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Head.

From the dust jacket- It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. At the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The 1990s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understanding. Happily, Chick Klosterman is more than up to the job.
Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than undisguised ambition. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 1900s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that it was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. This was the last era that held to the idea of an objective, hegemonic mainstream before everything began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. 

Review- Another wonderful book of essays by Klosterman that touches on many topics that dominated public thought in the 1900s. Klosterman is a great writer, who bring interesting insights into a very meaty topic, covering a whole decade in less than 350 pages. He talks TV, movies, politics, music, and more. The writing is very engaging, he makes his points and backs them them up well but leaves room for the reader to have their own opinion about the particular topic. He draws good parallels to modern day and how the while the world has changed, the problems haven't. I would recommend this book and everything else from Klosterman.  

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.