Between 1968 and 1980, fears about family deterioration and
national decline were ubiquitous in American political culture. In
No Direction Home, Natasha Zaretsky shows that these
perceptions of decline profoundly shaped one another.
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.