ABOUT THIS BOOK

In January 1978, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed that “There is all across our land a growing sense of peace and a sense of common purpose.” Yet in the ensuing months, a series of crises disturbed that fragile sense of peace, ultimately setting the stage for Reagan’s decisive victory in 1980 and ushering in the final phase of the Cold War.

Meltdown Expected tells the story of the power shifts from late 1978 through 1979 whose repercussions are still being felt. Iran’s revolution led to a hostage crisis while neighbouring Afghanistan became the site of a proxy war between the USSR and the US, who supplied aid to Islamic mujahideen fighters that would later form the Taliban. Meanwhile, as tragedies like the Jonestown mass suicide and the assassination of Harvey Milk captured the nation’s attention, the government quietly reasserted and expanded the FBI’s intelligence powers. Drawing from recently declassified government documents and covering everything from Three Mile Island to the rise of punk rock, Aaron J. Leonard paints a vivid portrait of a tumultuous yet pivotal time in American history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

AARON J. LEONARD writes about the history of radicalism and state repression in twentieth-century America. He is the author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists, The Folk Singers & the Bureau, and Whole World in an Uproar: Music, Rebellion & Repression 1955-1972. He lives in southern California.

REVIEWS

"Leonard has produced a fascinating account of an era that is growing quickly away from contemporary public attention. He shows that the world we live in today had not yet taken definitive shape, that the fluidity of social movements still alive from the 1960s, in some ways still growing, had the capacity to enhance democracy but fell toward failure. The power on the other side proved too great. Still, the details offer important clues for what may yet become the dynamos of tomorrow's American promise."

— Paul Buhle, coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left

"In Meltdown Expected, Aaron J. Leonard has crafted a highly readable survey of the upheavals, repressions, disasters, and political and economic transitions that marked the end of the 'Disco Decade' and the segue into the Reagan Era. He’s achieved a rare feat here, presenting those days with a broad sense of disparate yet simultaneous – and momentous – events."
— Scott Martelle, author of 1932: FDR, Hoover, and the Dawn of a New America

"[An] exquisite and unique history of the late 1970s. Drawing from government files, personal memories, conversations and multiple newspapers and texts, Leonard has composed a concise, thoughtful and important addition to the history of the decades after the 1960s. . . . The history put down in Meltdown Expected goes a long way towards explaining how we arrived at the current debacle we call the present."

— Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch

"Historians correctly remind us that, in the 1960s, America experienced cultural and political turmoil that still resonates nearly six decades later. But in Meltdown Expected, Aaron J. Leonard proves the overlooked point that events during the last years of the 1970s were just as crucial, from Jonestown to Three Mile Island, from the rise of the Religious Right to the growing threat of violence both at home and abroad. I frankly cannot conceive of a more important book for readers who want to truly understand not only how we have gotten to where we are today, but why."
— Jeff Guinn, author of The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

"An impressively comprehensive account. . . . Perhaps the greatest value of Meltdown Expected is as a synchronic snapshot of an era standing at the precipice of epochal social and geopolitical transformation, of the pangs and pathologies of an old world dying just before the new is born. . . . A timely portrait of a troubled world seemingly teetering on the brink."

— Journal of American History

"Offers a stirring snapshot of a multitude of crises that befell the United States and the world during 1978 and 1979. . . . Putting the local in conversation with the global, Leonard's book vividly captures the many 'meltdowns' that set the stage for the Reagan years in the 1980s. . . . Leonard fills each chapter with a multitude of events and anecdotes that make for an exciting read. . . . A captivating primer on various crises of the late 1970s."

— Journal of Disaster Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS