University of North Carolina Press
No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980
Key Metrics
- Natasha Zaretsky
- University of North Carolina Press
- Paperback
- 9780807857977
- 9.23 X 6.34 X 0.81 inches
- 1.06 pounds
- History > United States - 20th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Throughout the 1970s, anxieties about the future of the nuclear family collided with anxieties about the direction of the United States in the wake of military defeat in Vietnam and in the midst of economic recession, Zaretsky explains. By exploring such themes as the controversy surrounding prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-74, and debates about cultural narcissism, Zaretsky reveals that the 1970s marked a significant turning point in the history of American nationalism. After Vietnam, a wounded national identity--rooted in a collective sense of injury and fueled by images of family peril--exploded to the surface and helped set the stage for the Reagan Revolution. With an innovative analysis that integrates cultural, intellectual, and political history, No Direction Home explores the fears that not only shaped an earlier era but also have reverberated into our own time.
Author Bio
I was born in San Francisco in 1970, and my parents were activists in the antiwar, New Left, and feminist movements of the era. Many of the questions that I pose as a historian emerged out of the contradictions that shaped my childhood. I came of age in a family, community, and city that embraced the social and cultural transformations of the 1960s. But as I grew up, I watched as the political culture of the United States became polarized and as new forms of social and economic inequality took hold.
I arrived at the University of Alabama in the Fall of 2019 after almost two decades of teaching at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Over the course of my teaching career, I have taught courses in contemporary US history, US and the World, the histories of women, gender, and the family, modern lesbian and gay history, and American Studies. Many of my students come from rural, conservative backgrounds and have arrived at the university against considerable odds. Their life stories and perspectives have challenged me to develop more nuanced understandings of contemporary liberalism and conservatism that move beyond accounts of polarization and the culture wars.
I live in Homewood with my husband, two children, and a mutt named Ruthie.
Education
- B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz, American Studies
- M.A., Brown University, American Studies
- Ph.D., Brown University, American Studies
Source: The University of Alabama at Birmingham
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