THE MAGICAL DECADE

Chudwin offers historical and personal reflections on a turbulent decade in this memoir.

The author refers to the years between 1965-1975 as “the Magical Decade,” not least because of his own personal involvement in many of its happenings. As Chudwin writes, “a combination of good timing, good luck and good instincts led me to be a participant in many of the great events of that particular time.” (He jokingly dismisses comparisons to Forrest Gump.) From his boyhood in Chicago in 1965 to his time in medical school at the University of Michigan in 1975, the author discusses dozens of aspects of the period, from personal things like following sports, movies, and TV to broader social upheavals such as Roe v. Wade and the fight for women’s equality, the Vietnam War, the space race, and the Civil Rights movement. Throughout much of this time, Chudwin worked for the College Press Service Wire Network and wrote for the Michigan Daily, which afforded him a front-row seat for several of the signature events of the historical moment. The text includes plenty of illustrations, from playbills and postcards to photos of famous events taken by the author himself. The author relates all of his stories with a pitch-perfect mixture of personal reminiscence and historical reportage, as when he mentions becoming disillusioned with President Lyndon Johnson not only because of his policies on Vietnam, but also due to his “unctuous television speeches” on the subject. Chudwin reports on the Apollo 11 moon launch in July 1969, including his personal memories of the overwhelming sound of it; he remembers the long lines at the gas pumps, the “phalanxes of police in riot gear” facing off against anti-war protesters, and dozens of other features of the time, and it’s all brought vividly to life in these pages.

A richly detailed and involving account of a key period in 20th-century American history.