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When America Roared
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Published on Sep 15, 2026 | 9 Hours 8 Minutes
“In When America Roared, Jonathan Kaufman draws together a bushel of figures who thrived in one fateful decade…[providing] useful insights along the way.” —New York Times Book Review
The panoramic story of the 1980s, exploring the triumphs and failures of the decade that shaped the 21st century more than any other, from a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who witnessed the transformations firsthand
In January 1980, America seemed broken. Inflation raged. Interest rates topped 20 percent. Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with impunity. Japan was eating American manufacturing alive. Three networks controlled what Americans watched. China had been closed for 30 years.
Ten years later, everything had changed. The economy was booming. The Soviet Empire was collapsing. American businesses were competitive again.
In this immersive, character-driven narrative, Jonathan Kaufman lays bare the contending ideologies—and people—who battled for control of business, media and politics in the 1980s, shaping the way we live today. As Ronald Reagan and conservatives pummeled the Democratic party, as Jack Welch redefined leadership at Fortune 500 companies, and as deregulation spearheaded by Mark Fowler allowed television to become the hundreds of specialized and partisan channels we watch now, the groundwork was laid for our current economic and political conflicts. The decade also launched transformative social and political movements. Karen Nussbaum and Jane Fonda galvanized a struggling women’s movement, Evan Wolfson spearheaded the gay community’s legal fight against a hostile government, and Barack Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer in Chicago—all building long-lasting movements whose success progressives can learn from today.
From pivotal moments in board rooms and court rooms, to cultural touchstones like the birth of hip hop and of conservative talk radio, as well as the author’s eyewitness experiences in Tiananmen Square and Prague, When America Roared is the riveting story of how the 1980s built the world we live in, for better and for worse. It is the decade that made us—and the key to understanding where we go from here.
The panoramic story of the 1980s, exploring the triumphs and failures of the decade that shaped the 21st century more than any other, from a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who witnessed the transformations firsthand
In January 1980, America seemed broken. Inflation raged. Interest rates topped 20 percent. Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with impunity. Japan was eating American manufacturing alive. Three networks controlled what Americans watched. China had been closed for 30 years.
Ten years later, everything had changed. The economy was booming. The Soviet Empire was collapsing. American businesses were competitive again.
In this immersive, character-driven narrative, Jonathan Kaufman lays bare the contending ideologies—and people—who battled for control of business, media and politics in the 1980s, shaping the way we live today. As Ronald Reagan and conservatives pummeled the Democratic party, as Jack Welch redefined leadership at Fortune 500 companies, and as deregulation spearheaded by Mark Fowler allowed television to become the hundreds of specialized and partisan channels we watch now, the groundwork was laid for our current economic and political conflicts. The decade also launched transformative social and political movements. Karen Nussbaum and Jane Fonda galvanized a struggling women’s movement, Evan Wolfson spearheaded the gay community’s legal fight against a hostile government, and Barack Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer in Chicago—all building long-lasting movements whose success progressives can learn from today.
From pivotal moments in board rooms and court rooms, to cultural touchstones like the birth of hip hop and of conservative talk radio, as well as the author’s eyewitness experiences in Tiananmen Square and Prague, When America Roared is the riveting story of how the 1980s built the world we live in, for better and for worse. It is the decade that made us—and the key to understanding where we go from here.
Author
Jonathan Kaufman
Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter whose long list of bylines includes The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News. His wide-ranging reporting and editing have covered topics such as labor, local activism, racism and job discrimination, and corporate tax dodging, and have been recognized with the Gerald Loeb Award and the George Polk Award, as well as by the Columbia University School of Journalism, among others. He is the author of The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China; A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe; and Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.
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