I’ve been a Chuck Klosterman fan for years, so when granted the opportunity to read this ARC from NetGalley, I was thrilled. This was a super interesting read/trip down memory lane. It read almost like a textbook in some ways, and I have no doubt that some teachers may want to add this to their curriculum when teaching about recent social/political/cultural history.

One quote stood out early on: “Every generation melodramatically assumed it was somehow be the last, and there were some of that in the 90s, to end but not as much as in the decade that came before and far less than the decades that would come after. It was perhaps the last period in American history when personal and political engagement was still viewed as optional.”

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: February 8, 2022

“It was, in retrospect, a remarkably easy time to be alive.”

The nineties! This quote early in the book had me ready to dive into a nostalgic trip through my childhood because looking back—it really was an easier time to be alive—especially as a kid. Blissfully unaware of things to come.

As a decade that took me from kindergarten to high school—it was fascinating to relive the 90s through an adult lens. Very heavy on musical influences of the time which reeled me right in.

From grunge to sports, politics to crystal pepsi, Napster to OJ to the first season of The Real World and Dolly the cloned sheep. This is an in depth look at the last [mostly] analog decade that made us.

I used to be a huge fan of Chuck Klosterman, unfortunately I don't think he's an author for me anymore. Not sure if his writing has become less fun, or if I have changed as a reader but this just wasn't the book for me.

This book was written for a very certain, very specific generation of people. While many people, in fact, anyone of any generation can--and should--read this, this is a book that has references and inside jokes that only those OF Generation X will laugh at. Only Chuck Klosterman can combine a chapter of a book with Pauley Shore and Bill Clinton and it make sense.

This is a real...dare I say...definitive book of pop-culture, or at least "cool" pop culture of the Nineties. It's the good stuff. Reality Bites, Nirvana, The Matrix, OJ, Crystal Pepsi, Zima, Michael Jordan playing baseball. None of that weird neon, Vanilla Ice, MTV Spring Break house stuff. Klosterman gets to the root of what made the 90s great. He gets the meat of it - the heart of it all - the politics, the economy, the music, the movies, the college football scandal (!!!).

I've been a Chuck Klosterman fan since his days at Spin. I have read every single one of his books and have broken the spine from reading and re-reading. This one will be no different.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. Thanks to Chuck Klosterman for being the best.

I received an ARC of this upcoming book through NetGalley.

This is Chuck Klosterman at his absolute best, a series of essays displaying his unique, trademarked takes on the culture and events of the 1990s. The book has no overall theme, but it covers a wide range of topics. Klosterman does far more than recount things that happened; he always has an interesting angle on whatever he chooses to write about.

News stories covered include: the transition from Bush to Clinton, the Gulf War, Ross Perot, Rodney King and police brutality against blacks, the Oklahoma city bombing, , the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the UNAbomber, OJ Simpson, the Columbine shootings and Y2K ("the catastrophe that never happened").

Klosterman loves writing about music and covers the Seattle grunge movement, led by Nirvana with the Nevermind album and Smells Like Teen Spirit song. Other music topics include Tupac and hip-hop music, Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair, plus Garth Brooks. The beginnings of the demise of the music industry as it had been known is also described.

Mass media is another of Klosterman's favorite areas and he covers 90s authors, movies (like Titanic), TV (Seinfeld, Friends), the development of cable news networks (Fox News, MSNBC following CNN) and Oprah Winfrey.

And then there are the sports topics: the 1994 baseball work stoppage that resulted in cancellation of the World Series and the alienation of a significant portion of baseball's fan base, steroids and baseball, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls basketball dynasty and boxer Mike Tyson.

And there are the overall cultural trends: the emergence of Generation X, the new popularity of the internet and cell phones and the use of Google to replace one's memory.

Almost everything Klosterman writes about is fascinating, but if something less interesting gets talked about, he deftly moves on to something else soon enough.

It's only January but this thought-provoking book will be one of my favorites of 2022.

As someone who lived some of their most formative years (middle and high school) in the 1990s, Chuck Klosterman's book The Nineties is completely up my alley. While it seems insane that we are far enough removed from the 1990s to have any sort of cohesive perspective on it, it actually has been quite some time and themes certainly emerge for the decade. As an old millennial (xennial, really a microgeneration between Gen X and Millennials), I was old enough to remember the decade and many events Klosterman highlights I remember well and experienced the massive changes to people's way of life- especially in terms of technology. I did not grow up with the internet, cell phones, or digital music. I lived an analog life for most of my formative childhood years before rapid sweeping changes by the time I hit college completely upended how I interacted with others and the world.

Klosterman roped me in immediately with his first title being a riff on a Ben Folds Five song, one of the formative bands of my high school years. Throughout the book he highlights major events in worlds of politics, music, movies, sports, science, etc. The major overarching change in the 1990s had to do with technology, and its role in our lives. It changed from us controlling it to, by the end of the decade, it controlling our lives. In politics, he tries to answer the question how George HW Bush went from such a high approval rating to losing to an Arkansan named Bill Clinton, and how the Clinton presidency ramped up the polarization in the country. In music, "gangster" rap and the outrage about its explicit lyrics, grunge music, and the unexpected dominance of Garth Brooks are discussed. In cinema, the rise of the video store allows access to the public of much more variety of films, the rise and popularity of independent films, but also the juggernaut of Titanic. In sports, Michael Jordan dominated the decade with his time with the Chicago Bulls, baseball had a strike, and the steroid era of mammoth home run commenced. Major leaps in science occurred such as the cloning of the sheep Dolly. And major news stories that still reverberate now are discussed such as the Oklahoma City bombing, OJ Simpson trial, Columbine shooting, Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, etc. All which were highly televised. One can see the threads from events from the 1990s and how they were germs of issues that we are still dealing with now. Fascinating and nostalgic look at a decade where the world was in transition.

Thank you to Penguin Press via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

More accurate than a book on the 90s deserves to be; less meta than a book on the 90s deserves to be.

As a Gen-xer I absolutely loved this trip down memory lane. Im a huge fan of Klostweman, and this book didn’t disappoint.

Interesting retrospect on the 90s from a visit male middle class/ lower upper class male. It was great to revisit the turn of the century through this book.

As a fan of Chuck's previous books, "The Nineties" did not disappoint! The stream of conscious narrative stringing essays together under a common theme, interjecting pop culture and why it was relevant throughout makes for a great nostalgic read for anyone that lived through the 90's!

I have read several Chuck Klosterman books because my husband is a huge fan, so I am grateful to have received this ARC!

This is the type of book that you read and smile out loud. The type of nostalgia and insight from Chuck's opinions to his deep dives really flow. In particular, the book opens up talking about generations, and I highlighted a quote that I thought perfectly describes the way different generations view others. There were events that I had no memory of and events that I kept thinking "oh ya I forgot about that!" All in all, this was a fun read!

There isn't really much to give away with this book. It's a book about what led up to the nineties and nineties culture and life. This would make an excellent gift for a friend or a book to take on a trip.

I also absolutely love the cover!

Thanks again for ARC! Ordered a hard copy for my husband.

I had never read a Chuck Klosterman book but could easily recognize one of his when out in the wild because of the iconic covers. With no idea what his writing was like, I went in without any expectations to The Nineties. Within a few pages, I was completely charmed by Klosterman's writing. His dry and self-aware humor is never too self-deprecating to be annoying, nor does he come off as "too cool" either. (His footnote describing himself in the 90s had me howling.)

The Nineties is as much about what happened in the decade as it is about how we perceive it in the present. I read this book in the first week of 2021, during the post-holiday Omicron surge that has left most of us feeling tired and resigned to masks and scrounging for at-home test kits. Looking back felt like an escape for me to a simpler time. I turn 5 years old in 1990 and 15 in the year 2000. The future was something I took for granted. Everything from that decade looks baked in the sun within my memory—probably because I'm thinking about summer vacations in my southern hometown. The thing is, I recognized 98% of what is mentioned in this book, and was pulled into historical moments that felt familiar but lacked context until now. Reading this book felt like putting together a puzzle about the past. I was in the 5th grade when the OJ verdict came in and had to explain to my desk partner Janelle what "not guilty" ment. My school held a little "election" for the president in 1992 and I remember noticing the amount of votes that Ross Perot garnered from other 7 year olds. I was in the 8th grade when Columbine happened and 16 when I watched the Towers fall. All of these memories were filled out by Klosterman's essays that bracket the decade loosely between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11.

Klosterman sets up a chill vibe at the jump but then peels away the layers revealing how complicated life could be then. I left this book thinking that, while the styles and the technology has changed—we really haven't. Our memories evolve over time. I'm left thinking—especially right now—with the realization that I will (hopefully) look back at this time period and not think "wow we were so stupid" but instead "wow that was a mess and as good a decision as I could have made considering what was happening all around us".

This is not an exhaustive history and Klosterman himself admits this. He goes deep on Nirvana but barely skims the surface of the East Coast / West Coast hip-hop rivalry. (There were a couple sections that touch on sports that weren't relevant to my interests.) This really is a survey of the decade so don't go in expecting all your top hits things to make the list. My favorite sections were about politics and how language evolved in this decade.

I had a great time with this book and expect to purchase a few copies for the Gen-Xers in my life. I definitely see this as a gift book for people this year!

I came of age in the nineties, so this book immediately appealed to me. It’s at times, a fun trip down memory lane (e.g. the advent of the internet, Titanic, TiVo, Friends) and others a reminder of some of the more traumatizing elements of the decade (e.g. the Oklahoma City bombing). This is only my second book by this author. I read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs many, many years ago. I enjoyed Klosterman’s commentary and insights. He offers his perspective without coming off as the end-all be-all expert.

The organization of the book is kind of all over the place, jumping from topic to topic, which didn’t bother me very much, but I cold see other readers potentially being annoyed by that.

The NetGalley description does as good a job as one could do to summarize what Chuck Klosterman does in The Nineties. It is a vast, sprawling work, jumping from subject to subject and linking ideas that at first seem wholly unconnected. As with any Klosterman book, there are lots of music, tv, and pop culture references, and it’s very well written with funny, quotable lines throughout.

How much you enjoy The Nineties may well depend on whether you lived through that decade as an adult or not, whether you like me and Mr. Klosterman are a member of the actual greatest generation, Generation X. There were so many things discussed here that I hadn’t thought about in at least 20 years. 2 Live Crew, Ice-T’s song Cop Killer, and the absurd panic about such music. The bizarre “clear craze” fad of clear drinks like Zima and Crystal Pepsi. Biosphere 2 and the zenith of New Age dogma in American life. Dolly the cloned sheep.

“But its more illuminating feature is something that often happens with popular history: An attempt at analyzing the distant past ends up being more astute about the living present.” Mr. Klosterman makes this observation while doing the exact same thing, placing topics and events from the Nineties that we still recall into a contemporary context. The beginning of the internet in everyday life. How online music sharing completely changed the music industry. How Fox Murder and the X-Files normalized conspiracy theories. How the televising of events like the Clarence Thomas Confirmation hearings, the OJ Bronco chase and trial, and Columbine changed how we think about what is real (“Anything experienced through the screen of a television becomes a TV show”). And how the 2000 Election “was the end of small differences. Moving forward, all differences would be colossal and ideological.”

Does The Nineties fully make sense of that decade before 9/11? Probably not, though that’s probably an impossible goal. And while he addresses his own viewpoint head-on, in the end this book comes from a mainstream, white, middle-class experience of 1990s America. If you were Black, if you were gay, I doubt you’d agree with Mr. Klosterman that life in the Nineties was “ecstatically complacent,” even though I—a fellow straight, white, middle-class man who was in his twenties during that decade—know exactly what he means. But as an answer to how America got to where we are now, the signposts along the way that warned what we were slipping towards, The Nineties is an excellent study. Recommended.

As someone who turned 3 in 1990, I viewed the events of this decade through a child’s eyes, so it was enlightening to get Klosterman’s point of view on things. This book is him at his best — a distanced yet wry observer of everything from Ross Perot’s presidential bid to the post-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio obsession.

No one in the world could dissect the Nineties like Klosterman. I found this collection of essays to be delightful and thought-provoking, like all of his work. It was fascinating to read these perspectives on a decade where I was a child and to gain an understanding of them as an adult.

This is a great book for any pop culture sponge. I'd also suggest those who appreciate quick wit and sometimes grand abstract thinking pick up this book.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is only my second time reading Klosterman, as I loved Fargo Rock City when I was a teenager. I think this was possibly a disservice to my expectations going into this book, as I remember that being pretty damn funny. Combine that experience with the amusing cover of The Ninties, and I went into this expecting a light hearted, funny exploration of a decade I sort of remember.

That was not what I got.

Now, The Ninties is well-written, thought-provoking, and full of highly underline-able quotes. However, it didn't have the charm and nostalgia factor I was wanting. I didn't factor that I to the rating, but throwing it out there for any other potential reader to consider.

Overall, if you're a fan of essay collections and want to read an insightful and witty account of a highly overlooked decade, than this is for you.

Lots of good research and really let’s the reader relive the 90s in this book. Quick page turner and something I really enjoyed.

I have heard many people talk very highly about Chuck Klosterman's books although I have yet to read his work. I was fortunately given an ARC from NetGalley for review.

The Nineties is a collection of essays about different shifts and cultural happenings throughout the decade. I found some of the essays really interesting and others not so much. There was a brief essay on I believe it was the group the Spin Doctors? I was unsure why that was added into the book...it did not quite make sense to me with some of the other things that were covered. Such as, Bill Clinton, of course, and Biosphere 2 and what not.

However, if you lived through the 90s or want a great visual idea of what it was like to experience he did a wonderful job bringing that to life in this book. I see why it will be favorable or something people would like to read, however it just was not for me.

What I disliked the most is that I think it was just not my style of book. The writing was really nice but this book helped me see that I am not a big fan of the essay-type books and perhaps just not interested enough in Klosterman or reading his views on subject matter but I do see why people read him. That being said I gave it a 2-star rating because personally I could have spent 25m getting the same thing without spending hours reading a book.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

It’s always a little hit or miss with me when it comes to works by Chuck Klosterman. This one kind of fell in the middle, but I’m ultimately going to call it a miss. Born in 1980, I grew up in the 90s, so I was excited when I saw this. The cover grabbed my attention. The content in the book? Not so much. Parts were interesting (the chapter on the internet, VHS and how it changed movies), some I had no interest in (the long chapter on Nirvana and rap), and some I had no idea what was going on ( the chapter that started about clear beverages, transitioned to The Real World, and then talked at length about Biosphere 2).

In the end, I found myself skimming rather than reading. It was hard to get invested and I DNF’d this at 51%.

Maybe slightly older readers will find this interesting and enjoyable, but it wasn’t for me. Two stars, wouldn’t recommend.