Few combinations are better suited than Chuck Klosterman and the decade of The Nineties. As a culture writer there are few that can match the unique style of Klosterman and there are few eras offering a more inviting target for his keen eye. The book will appease both those who know the author best for his long essays philosophizing on The Real World and Billy Joel and for those who want to better understand a culturally turbulent decade whose influence in shaping today’s cultural battles is far too often overlooked.

An excellent book.

This book definitely took me back to the 90's. The pop culture and influences was on point. I know I'll have my son read this. Will recommend to anyone who likes non-fiction.

Listen, assigning a grade to a Chuck Klosterman book is kind of ridiculous. Such scores are supposed to signal to other people the value you’ve placed on a book and whether they should read it. But with Klosterman in particular, each reader’s relationship to his writing seems distinctively unique. A five-star rating is going to mean next-to-nothing to an ardent detractor, while his biggest cheerleaders would write off a one-star rating as the opinion of a person who just “doesn’t get it.” Neither is wrong; it's just that subjectivity and confirmation bias seem to have an even more outsized significance with his work.

So for you to place any weight on what I think of any given Klosterman book, you should know exactly where I’m coming from. I started reading him shortly after the release of Fargo Rock City and thought both it and Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs were fantastic. Ditto Killing Yourself to Live. However, over the past 17 years, my enthusiasm for each new project has progressively waned, and the guy who I once would have loved to have a beer with slowly started feeling like the insufferable nag at the bar who thought he was smarter than you and gleefully tried to prove it until last call. Moreover, his writing started to feel like real empty calorie content — pretty fun to read, but without any lasting impression. More and more, I would finish one of his essays and struggle to remember how it began or what the hell his point was. In other words, I’ve found myself really torn but have continued to read each new book, looking for the spark I once felt while reading him dissect Saved by the Bell like it was To Kill a Mockingbird.

So how does someone like me feel about Chuck’s new offering, The Nineties? It’s fine. The distinct impression I’m left with is that Klosterman is officially embarrassed or bored with pop culture criticism, because his more overt forays into the trends and entertainment of the 90s read like either stereo instructions or the result of a thesaurus coming to life and dry humping his keyboard for hours on end. The chapters on Generation X and the internet are so laborious as to be unpleasant. At one point, Klosterman describes reading an essay from the 1980s on the evolution of culture, describing one passage as “an unwieldy sentence to grasp.” I could only sadly nod my head, ironically knowing exactly how he felt.

On the other hand, there is certainly content in The Nineties that is a joy to read. Interestingly, his chapters on the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are probably the most vibrant and engaging, making me think that we’d all be better off if he completely dropped the pop pretense and gave us a tome on the current state of democracy or the historical importance of James K. Polk. Occasionally, he seems to recapture his love of the inane, like his breakdown of the short-lived Zima/Crystal Pepsi revolution.

After I decided upon my rating for The Nineties (a 2 out of 5), I glanced at what other readers had thought of the book and indeed found responses across the board, including many that raved of its brilliance. There is every conceivable chance that you will be blown away by The Nineties, too. If, however, you are like me, and have been teetering back and forth for the better part of two decades on how you feel about Klosterman’s continued output, The Nineties will like exactly more of the same.

Thanks to Net Galley and Penguin Press for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Standard fascinating Klosterman fare, especially interesting for those of us who grew up in the 90s. A bit more impenetrable/less personal and funny than previous works, but we're all getting old, and that's just what happens.

Thanks for the ARC, Netgalley! This collection of writings on various components of the 90's was a real eye opener into trends I had never considered. I enjoyed Klosterman's assessment of the band Nirvana in stark contrast to the message Kurt Cobain himself put forth, and I found it interesting the comparison drawn between Tupac and Cobain's deaths. The 90's definitely seemed like an almost surreal decade. People weren't fighting with each other, and everyone had hope and looked to the 2000s as this exciting future on the horizon. Klosterman chose various aspects to highlight curious facts, including presidencies, scandals, bands, sports, movies, TV Shows, the internet. While I got lost in the politics and sports portions at times, they weren't so overwhelming, and someone unfamiliar with those subjects could still understand and read through. I didn't notice any political leanings from the author, either, more just a stick to the facts and observation through a dry lens humor sort of approach. I learning many interesting things, and I will be recommending this title to anyone as obsessed with pop culture and the 90's as I am!

This book has to be the most comprehensive analysis of the 90s that i’ve ever read! It’s so broad that there’s sure to be some chapters that people love and others they skim over- its really a deep dive into everything from music, movies, celebrities, politics, pop culture, and more. My favorites were the music chapters and analysis of Clinton's era.

This was a fun read that provided an in depth flashback to the nineties, although at times it got a little too technical and felt like required reading to me. Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC!

With the revival of interest in the 1990s, I think this will be well-received by our students and faculty. It was an interesting read and has gotten me more interested in Klosterman's writing going forward. Will purchase for the university library.

Thank you to Netgalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I could not get into this book. It was well researched and well written but unfortunately not for me. It is highly informative but reads more like a textbook than something relaxing and pleasurable to read. There were some interesting tidbits but overall I did not finish it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️- I first read Klosterman in my teens. sex, Drugs, and Cocopuffs. I always enjoy the fact that his writing is nostalgic for and brings me back to the time of my youth. This book was no different, most of the events in the book were familiar to me since I had lived through them, some I hadn’t heard of before. Just like his other books there are some chapters that I like more than others. Over all a sold book. If you are looking to read about the 90s. Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the advance copy.

As a member of Generation X (born 2/77), nearly every page of this book brought back a flood of memories alternating good, bad, ugly and sometimes a mix of all three. The format is classic Klosterman, critical analysis of pop culture told by way of essays both short and long, arranged by topics within chapters. This makes me an incredibly easy read and one that you can do chapter by chapter without feeling like you are reading an entire book.

Sports, music, movies, politics, technology...all of the major moments and milestones of the decade are covered. But, what Klosterman does so well is not only analyzing the past but connecting it through to today. This is so important because without connecting history to the present the history is nothing more than window shopping.

It is amazing to look back at all of the things that happened in the 90s and, with hindsight, they now seem unbelievable (Pauly Shore being a reliable box office star, for example) yet, at the time were completely normal.

This book is perfect for anyone who, whether they lived through the decade or not, wants to know more about how we got to where we are today and, possibly, where we are going in the future.

Highly recommended.

TL;DR

If you’re also a child of the 90s, Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties will remind you of a simpler time where trying too hard was the worst thing you could do. Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.

Review: The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

I grew up in the 90s. From 1992 to 1996, I was a high schooler, and from 1996 to 2000, I was drinking my way through college. Because those were my formative years, that decade is forever imprinted upon my soul. Grunge will always be my music. I still remember the first time that I saw Pearl Jam’s Alive music video. It was a seismic shift in my life. Prior to that moment, I loved 80s Hair Bands, like Motley Crüe and Poison. But as I watched the black and white video, I felt a change. Music went from being a slick, playful entertainment to painful, serious art. (Yes, I didn’t yet understand that Pearl Jam was just as much corporate music as the Hair Bands.) Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, etc. made me want to move to Seattle and live a wilder life than my boring Midwest self. (I didn’t.) This shift towards ‘Alternative Rock’ was the first time I remember being inspired to write. I produced bad poetry that in my mind were song lyrics. My parents began renting movies as a weekend treat. We gathered on Thursday evenings for Must See TV. In college, I had to watch Friends, which I knew was a mediocre comedy and yet couldn’t stop watching. When I look back on the 90s, my memories are, of course, imperfect and hazy with nostalgia. Prior to marrying Sue and becoming a father, the 90s were the best time of my life. So much happened that I don’t remember despite the fact that I’ll always think the 90s were just 10 years ago. When reading The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman, I got a mixture of feelings of both recognition and yet alienation. It was like coming home after a long absence to find that you don’t recognize half the decorations in your house. This may seem like a criticism, but it’s not. Klosterman’s account of the 90s took familiar events and made me consider them with a fresh perspective. He both set the 90s as a unique decade while demonstrating it as a consequence of the history that precedes it. The Nineties works as a fantastic introduction and critique of the decade that formed me.

The Nineties looks back at the United States of the 1990s. It’s a time that sticks in most people minds as the birth of grunge, as a time that elevated slackers, and the society that gave us Bill Clinton. Klosterman goes back to remind the reader of all the weird things that happened that have been overshadowed by 9/11. Klosterman, as he is wont to do, covers a lot of ground in this book. From Ross Perot to Nirvana to the O.J. Simpson trial, The Nineties shows the breadth of the decade. Klosterman’s insightful critiques portrays a decade where the U.S. looked inward. The biggest problem was not having a feeling of detachment. Coming off winning the Cold War, the status quo of the U.S. felt inevitable and immutable. Klosterman makes the argument that the changes this decade actually radically altered U.S. society. This was a time and a generation stuck between landlines and cellphones, between no internet and constant connection. Music, television, and art looked to the 70s as a role model for ironic detachment. Politics hadn’t yet infected every aspect of life; in fact, Klosterman reminds the reader that in the 2000 election, Bush and Gore were seen as basically the same person up until Florida boofed the election. The Nineties is a glorious book displaying the complexity lying underneath a simpler time in U.S. history.

The Nineties is a collection of essays critiquing popular culture and U.S. society at large. It uses the recent history of the 90s to show how that decade set society up for changes that followed. There is so much good material here to dig into. I could write essays reacting to nearly all the essays in this book. From the internet to art to politics to Michael Jordan’s ill-fated baseball career, Klosterman interrogates the trends, causes, and reactions that made the 90s the slacker decade.

Structure

In the ARC that I received, there are twelve major essays and eleven shorter pieces. Each is a standalone bit of writing with the thread of the 90s theme threaded through. The longer essays are, of course, meatier, denser, and have more nuanced arguments built into them. The shorter pieces were quite interesting and acted as a palate cleanser for me. I found this to be an excellent method to pace through the book. Usually, in books that are collections of essays like this, long essays placed back to back make the book feel slow. The shorter articles between longer essays change up the expected rhythm of a book like this. I appreciated it, and it’s impressive that Klosterman can change gears so effectively. For me, having a meaningful essay in so few words is very difficult, and here, Klosterman writes engagingly in both short and long form.

Television

Klosterman dedicates a few essays to the changing habit of television consumption during the 90s. These essays really had me thinking about that time, and he’s got a point. I remember in the 80s, we watched the Cosby Show and Cheers on Thursday nights. But it wasn’t until the 90s that Thursday nights became an event. Seinfeld, Friends, and ER extended beyond simply being shows to entertain. They became ways of grouping ourselves. Not only did we have a standing appointment to watch these shows together, we talked about them between classes; we made sure not to miss an episode. Television shows took on an importance that they hadn’t possessed before. And not watching television took on a counter-culture importance instead of being elitist.

I remember discussing different shows with different people. For example, the people who enjoyed In Living Color thought Friends was mediocre comedy. (They were correct.) And the people who watched Friends with me could care less about Fraiser. I don’t know if this was universal or not. The point is that television took on a larger cultural role than it had in the 80s. Klosterman shows how this led into how television has become equivalent or better to films in our streaming culture.

In the 90s, another trend began in television that opened up longer form stories. Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were shows designed around season long story arcs. Instead of the show focusing on episodic content, these shows told larger stories. While other shows had story arcs that lasted more than one episode (think Friends‘s will they/won’t they with Ross and Rachel), these arcs weren’t the point of the show or even of the season. Buffy’s structure was each season had a ‘big Bad’ that the gang ended up fighting against until the season finale. Babylon 5 was written with a five season arc in mind. This type of story telling would become the norm, especially as streaming services took off and began producing their own content. Klosterman got me thinking about these shows, and his essays helped me place them as seeds of a larger (and in my opinion a better) trend. Isn’t that what good essays should do? I think so. I love when an essay inspires me to take its premise and apply it beyond the boundaries of the author’s writing.

Film

Klosterman writes about the proliferation of movies that came about during the 90s as VCRs became affordable and video rental businesses popped up. This essay was particularly excellent. The ability to access any movie I could think of changed my younger self. Instead of going to the theatre, we went down the street and had the movie for a couple days. Rewatching movies that I loved became a habit for me. But, as Klosterman states, video stores biggest impact was that the selection of movies available to my small town exploded. Instead of just the big production movies, it was possible to see independent films or weird things, like Faces of Death or the UFC videos. With the opening of video rental stores, we had access to a broader range of art than ever before.

Klosterman’s analysis of video store bros is also spot on here. I can think of different people that I’ve met in my life that fall into this category. And one of the connecting factors was that they worked in rental stores. I particularly like Klosterman’s discussion of how rental stores produced directors like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. This essay is worth the price fo the book itself.

The Internet

With respect to the internet, the 90s was a sandwich generation stuck between no and constant connection. Such a dramatic shift in life can only be understood by those who went through it. I imagine its similar to how the generation raised with the proliferation of the Model T felt. Prior to that, carriages, horses, and trains dominated travel. With the Model T, automobile ownership exploded, and society has never looked back. During the 90s information was becoming accessible to anyone. During my senior year of high school, the English teacher assigned a research paper to meet requirements to graduate. It was such a serious project that the class took a field trip to the local college library to conduct research. That’s right, we loaded up in a bus and got our first experience of college. We had to work with librarians and the card catalog to find out things that are right at hand now. Today, students in the same class at that high school use Google to do research.

Of course, the proliferation of information has cheapened and, almost, destroyed the word research. Too many people seriously believe that watching a YouTube video is conducting research. (It’s not.) Being flooded with information has destroyed our ability to evaluate said information and sources. I miss the days when research universally meant reading books, magazines, and/or journals.

Klosterman also points out that privacy has in a way become reversed. We used to put our names, phone numbers, and addresses in a giant book that everyone had. The phonebook was necessary, and all your information was right there. Now, putting that information into the world is considered a transgression of privacy that didn’t exist in the 90s. Klosterman’s discussion is fascinating and enlightening.

Politics

I miss the politics of the 90s. It had not infected every aspect of life. It was common to be friends with someone who disagreed with your politics. But, as nostalgia is wont to do, I looked back at this time with rose-colored glasses. Politics in the 90s was weird. Ross Perot incorrectly received blame for George H.W. Bush’s loss, and Ralph Nader didn’t get enough blame for George W. Bush’s win. Klosterman’s analysis of the politics of this time is excellent, and as political scientists are reexamining Clinton’s legacy in restructuring the Democratic party, Klosterman offers insight into the political scene of that decade. The analysis of why Clinton resonated with voters while H.W. Bush and Bob Dole didn’t is excellent. It’s not the analysis of a political scientist but a social critic, which makes it a kind of meta-commentary. Clinton appealed more on a social level than either of his opponents.

Conclusion

Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties made this child of the 90s very happy. It felt like returning to a simpler time while seeing it through different eyes. This book won me over as a Klosterman fan. I plan to check out his previous work, and I suggest you check out this book.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into at first with this book, but I'm so glad I read it. An interesting recap and examination of the nineties.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-copy.

This book brought back a lot of fun memories from the 90's and I learned a few things that I wasn't aware of. At times the book could have been a little less of a history lesson and more about the culture of the era, I was hoping for more pop culture, but it was worth the read. Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Do you love the nineties? Are you nostalgic for the final decade of the last millennium? You're not alone. The Nineties is a nostalgic trip to a time before streaming, wi-fi, and smart phones. You still needed a portable cd player or walkman or needed to catch a song on the radio to listen to music. This book takes a look at 90s pop culture and is highly entertaining while doing so. Highly recommended!

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, PENGUIN GROUP The Penguin Press and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Chuck Klosterman captures the Nineties perfectly. I lived through them, this was it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of essays. As someone who lived my formative years in the 90's- I was 19 in 1999-there were so many times when I just had to put the book down and take a moment because Klosterman described perfectly what it was like living through the era- from small details to macro descriptions.

The mix of essays are on topics ranging from cultural, political, technological and economic, to more, making it a multidimensional and satisfying read.

Klosterman is smart, funny and dedicated to telling the story of a generation (X) and of a decade that was like no other. This is beyond nostalgia- although there is that. The cultural critiques are deep and illuminating. I don't purport to know how other age-groups might react to this book, but as a Genxer I very much related and was sad when the book was done.

As a librarian, I would pair this book with another great collection of essays I recently read by Rax King - 'Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer'. Although there are some key differences (King's book is about 10 years chronologically after Klosterman's, and King's incorporates a lot more personal memoir and the experience of being a woman), they are both witty, incisive essays based around critiquing cultural artefacts, and a delight to read.

Ok so the nineties.. what a decade that was! I am a 90's kid through and through.
This book made me very nostalgic on the a lot of levels.. from grunge music to Nirvana to
Alanis Morissette to Mike Tyson.

There's a lot of information in this book, the cover may look very cutesy but
its packed with information of events and stuff that happened well in the
nineties obviously! haha!

I think that everyone that experienced the crazy decade which is the nineties should read this book!

I definitely enjoyed this book, as I think anyone would who lived through the nineties would. I've never read any Chuck Klosterman before, so I didn't know what to expect. It's reflective without being nostalgic or pandering. It's also great and making connections between events and tying ideas together. But nothing fully blew my mind or challenged my thinking. And the moments I personally enjoyed the most were the weirder parts of culture, like Crystal Pepsi, as opposed to Ross Perot's role in the 1992 election. Nonetheless, the book never dwells on any topic too long and it bops along as a fairly compulsive read.

This is a book about Generation X, for Generation X, but one of the generation's best cultural critics.

I always considered myself an '80s kid (I graduated high school in 1989), but the 90s were when I and my generation really came into our own. I cast my first vote for president. I finished colleged, got my first job, married, had my first kid. I'm an 80s kid but a 90s grown-up, I guess.

Klosterman brings a rich background of pop culture criticism to this endavor, particularly in the area of music. He kicks of the book with a discussion of grunge and Nirvana that took me deeper into the genre than I had at the time. He uses music to show that the generation coming of age in the 90s was looking for its own form of authenticity after the glitz and glam of the 80s. The theme ranged from Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites to Alanis Morisette's pop song ("The 90s equivalent of a self-own," Klosterman writes, "Here, it seemed, was a woman singing about irony without knowing what Irony was.")

Klosterman is at his most insightful when he writes about pop. Musings on politics and the rise of Oprah are interesting, but I didn't find them to bring anything new.

One of the most interest discussions was on the rise of the Internet. The 90s began with few people having ever heard of the Internet, and it ended with a majority of people having an email account and a modem. The Boomer generation still sees itself largely outside the boundaries of this Internet, Klosterman writes, while the Millenial Generation would hardly be able to imaging life without it. Generation X grew up in the 'before time' and worked in the 'after.' As I read, I thought of the two year stretch between the time I first heard the word, "e-mail," and the time I hooked my own computer up to the World Wide Web.

For 90s-adjacent Millenials, there are chapters on the TV shows Friends and Seinfeld, reflections on sports: Michael Jordan and baseball's steroids scandal. Klosterman covers a lot of ground. Readers will leave enlightened.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for providing me with a free galley in exchange for this honest review.