The 1970’s — What Was America Reading?

          

Minerva, 1889 – 1890, Roman goddess of poetry, music, wisdom, and warriors (Greek, Athena), bronze sculpture by Norwegian American artist, Jakob H. F. Fjelde, downtown Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 

 

The first black hole was discovered in the same decade that Star Wars was released (and not by Columbo, Charlie’s Angels, or Sonny and Cher). It was the 1970’s, and you were probably wearing Halston ultrasuede or cashmere, leisure suits, platform shoes, string bikinis, and hot pants. Or maybe you were more the Birkenstock type, sporting tie-dye jeans, crocheted vests (think orange and lime green), and bouncy, wide bell-bottoms.

In 1977, there was a world shortage of coffee and prices soared from 50¢ a pound to $3.20 (isn’t it around $12 a pound today?). You might have been playing a lightshow guitar (imitating Pink Floyd), or listening to the Stones, Roberta Flack, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Tony Orlando (knock 3 times), or Gladys Knight and the Pips, on your new Sony Walkman.

 

The Beatles broke up, Jack Nicholson flew over the cuckoo’s nest, Harold and Maud were the May/December romance of the big screen, playing next to The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, and Saturday Night Fever. Yes, John Travolta was hot (even before his Pulp Fiction days). So was Billie Jean King, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, and Jesus Christ Superstar (did you see Andrew Lloyd Webber on American Idol?).

If you are under 21 and voted during the 2008 Presidential Primary, you can thank the 1970’s — the voting age in the U.S. was lowered to 18. And Paper Mate introduced a new erasable ink pen, allowing you to wipe out those pesky voting mistakes in a single swipe.

But don’t jump too fast. It was before the age of the hanging chad. The Apple II computer had just hit the market, the first email took a lumbering ride across ARPANet (central backbone during the development of the Internet), and Intel’s first microprocessor 4004 (1971) contained 2,300 transistors (today’s will run 3,000 times faster).

            

In the 1970’s Annie Hall was all the rage, along with Club Med, the VCR, streaking (yes, I tried it), and Pet Rocks (move over Sony the Pug!). Patty Hearst wielded her first machine gun, Son of Sam ran loose in the streets, Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, murdered 1-2 million people, and the Ohio National Guard shot and killed 4 college students at Kent State during an anti-war demonstration. Doesn’t that just blow your mind?

In the Me Decade, Elvis died of an overdose. So did Sid Vicious and Jim Morrison. Life and Look magazines were defunct by the end of the decade, along with cigarette advertising on TV, the draft, the VW bug (so they thought), and the Vietnam War. There was a recession in 1974 on top of an oil crisis in 1973 (what’s changed?). And TV would never be the same: Bonanza ended after 14 years; Gunsmoke after 20; and Ed Sullivan called it quits after 23 years.

You don’t see that kind of longevity in 21st Century media. Nor would you ever see televised daily proceedings of a national debacle like Richard Nixon and Watergate.

 

The world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in England, CAT-scans were introduced, the Heimlich maneuver perfected, and popular 70’s culture was buzzing with new words and phrases:  Murphy’s Law, Pro-choice, pumping iron, Punk rock, Rubik’s cube. Don’t rock the boat!

Money, money, money — 180,000 Americans were millionaires by the mid-70’s, an average hospital stay would set you back $81 a day, and a First Class postage stamp was 6¢ (Airmail, 10¢). The Metropolitan Museum paid $5.5 million for a Diego Velázquez portrait, while the Susan B. Anthony dollar took a political nosedive.

Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post in the 70’s, and Cosmopolitan blossomed with Helen Gurley Brown at the helm. But literature (and a few oddball tomes thrown in for good measure) still boomed under the watchful eye of Minerva, Roman goddess of poetry and wisdom.

You can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. You can also tell a lot about a culture. In the 1970’s, here’s what America was reading.

  

1 9 7 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

FICTION

1. Love Story; Oliver’s Story, Erich Segal
2. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
3. Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
4. Travels with My Aunt, Graham Greene
5. Rich Man, Poor Man, Irwin Shaw
6. Wheels; Overload, Arthur Hailey
7. The Exorcist, William P. Blatty
8. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
9. Message from Malaga, Helen MacInnes
10. Rabbit Redux, John Updike
11. The Betsy, Harold Robbins
12. The Winds of War, Herman Wouk
13. Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach
14. The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth
15. My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
16. Captains and the Kings, Taylor Caldwell
17. Once Is Not Enough; Delores, Jacqueline Susann
18. Breakfast of Champions; Jailbird; Slapstick: or, Lonesome No More!, Kurt Vonnegut
19. Burr; 1876, Gore Vidal
20. The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart
21. Evening in Byzantium, Irwin Shaw
22. The Drifters; Centennial; Chesapeake, James A. Michener
23. The Matlock Paper, Robert Ludlum
24. The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, Paul E. Erdman
25. Watership Down, Richard Adams
26. Jaws; The Deep, Peter Benchley
27. The Dogs of War, Frederick Forsyth
28. The Fan Club, Irving Wallace
29. I Heard the Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven
30. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
31. The Moneychangers, Arthur Hailey
32. Curtain; Sleeping Murder, Agatha Christie
33. Looking for Mister Goodbar, Judith Rossner
34. The Choirboys, Joseph Wambaugh
35. The Eagle Has Landed, Jack Higgins
36. The Greek Treasure: A Biographical Novel of Henry and Sophia Schliemann, Irving Stone
37. The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton
38. Shogun, James Clavell
39. Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow
40. Trinity, Leon Uris
41. A Stranger in the Mirror, Bloodlines, Sidney Sheldon
42. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien; Christopher Tolkien
43. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
44. How To Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
45. Delta of Venus: Erotica, Anaïs Nin
46. War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk
47. Fools Die, Mario Puzo
48. Scruples, Judith Krantz
49. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
50. The Dead Zone, Stephen King
51. The Third World War: August 1985, Gen. Sir John Hackett, et al.
52. Smiley’s People, John Le Carré

 

 

 

1 9 7 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

NON-FICTION

1. Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex but Were Afraid To Ask, David Reuben, M.D.
2. The New English Bible
3. The Sensuous Woman, “J”
4. Better Homes and Gardens Fondue and Tabletop Cooking; Better Homes and Gardens Blender Cook Book; Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cookbook
5. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, William Morris
6. Body Language, Julius Fast
7. In Someone’s Shadow; Caught in the Quiet, Rod McKuen
8. The Sensous Man, “M”
9. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
10. I’m O.K., You’re O.K., Thomas Harris
11. Any Woman Can!, David Reuben, M.D.
12. Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer
13. Eleanor and Franklin, Joseph P. Lash
14. Wunnerful, Wunnerful!, Lawrence Welk
15. Honor Thy Father, Gay Talese
16. Fields of Wonder, Rod McKuen
17. The Living Bible, Kenneth Taylor
18. Open Marriage, Nena and George O’Neill
19. Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman
20. Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, Robert C. Atkins
21. The Peter Prescription, Laurence J. Peter
22. A World Beyond, Ruth Montgomery
23. Journey to Ixtlan; Tales of Power; The Second Ring of Power, Carlos Castaneda
24. The Joy of Sex; More Joy: A Lovemaking Companion to The Joy of Sex, Alex Comfort
25. Weight Watchers Program Cookbook, Jean Nidetch
26. How To Be Your Own Best Friend, Mildred Newman, et al.
27. The Art of Walt Disney, Christopher Finch
28. Alistair Cooke’s America, Alistair Cooke
29. Sybil, Flora R. Schreiber
30. The Total Woman, Marabel Morgan
31. All the President’s Men; The Final Days, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
32. You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis, Harry Browne
33. All Things Bright and Beautiful; All Things Wise and Wonderful, James Herriot
34. The Bermuda Triangle, Charles Berlitz with J. Manson Valentine
35. Angels: God’s Secret Agents, Billy Graham
36. Winning Through Intimidation; Looking Out for #1; Restoring the American Dream, Robert Ringer
37. TM: Discovering Energy and Overcoming Stress, Harold H. Bloomfield
38. Sylvia Porter’s Money Book, Sylvia Porter
39. Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week, Laurence E. Morehouse and Leonard Gross
40. Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon, Theodore H. White
41. Roots, Alex Haley
42. Your Erroneous Zones; Pulling Your Own Strings, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
43. Passages: The Predictable Crises of Adult Life, Gail Sheehy
44. The Grass ls Always Greener over the Septic Tank; If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries–What Am I Doing in the Pits?; Aunt Erma’s Cope Book, Erma Bombeck
45. Blind Ambition: The White House Years, John Dean
46. The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, Shere Hite
47. The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate, Leon Jaworski
48. The Book of Lists, David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace
49. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Carl Sagan
50. The Amityville Horror, Jay Anson
51. Gnomes, Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet
52. The Complete Book of Running, James Fixx
53. Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford
54. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon
55. Faeries, Brian Froud and Alan Lee
56. The Muppet Show Book, the Muppet People
57. The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, Herman Tarnower, M.D., and Samm Sinclair Baker
58. The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise, Nathan Pritikin and Patrick McGrady Jr.
59. White House Years, Henry Kissinger
60. Lauren Bacall By Myself, Lauren Bacall
61. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong

             
Study In Light, downtown Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, April 24th, 2008

-Resources:  1970’s Bestsellers List from Cader Books, Writer’s Dream Tools, and The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library

-related to posts: The 1950’s – What Was America Reading?, The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?, and Book Talk – Do You Let Yourself Read?

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