THE GREAT FUNK

In the sixties, as the nation anticipated the conquest of space, the defeatof poverty, and an end to injustice at home and abroad, no goal seemedbeyond America's reach. Then the seventies arrived—bringing oilshocks and gas lines, the disgrace and resignation of a president, defeatin Vietnam, terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, urban squalor, bizarrecrimes, high prices, and a bad economy. The country fell into a great funk. But when things fall apart, you can take the fragments and make somethingfresh. Avocado kitchens and Earth Shoes may have been ugly, but theysignaled new modes of seeing and being. The first generation to see Earthfrom space found ways to make life's everyday routines—eating,keeping warm, taking out the trash—meaningful, both personally andglobally. And many decided to reinvent themselves. In Populuxe, a"textbook of consumerism in the Push Button Age" (Alan J. Adler, LosAngeles Times), Thomas Hine scrutinized the looks and life of the 1950s and1960s, revealing the hopes and fears expressed in that era's design. In thesame way, The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug)in the Seventies maps a complex era by looking at its ideas, feelings, sex,fashions, textures, gestures, colors, demographic forces, artisticexpressions, and other phenomena that shaped our lives. Hine gets into theshoes and heads of those who experienced the seventies—exploringtheir homes, feeling the beat of their music, and scanning the ads thatincited their desires. But The Great Funk is more than a lavish catalogueof seventies culture: it's a smart, informed, lively look at the "Medecade" through the eyes of the man House & Garden called "America'ssharpest design critic."