Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia

by Francis Wheen (Author), Francis Wheen (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.25

  Strange Days Indeed tells the story of how the paranoia exemplified by Nixon and Wilson became the defining characteristic of western politics and culture in the 1970s. Francis Wheen will vividly evoke the characters, events and atmosphere of an era in which the truth was far stranger than even the most outlandish fiction.

  In 1971 Richard Nixon installed a sophisticated voice-activated recording system in the White House. Three years later he became the first US president to resign, implicated in the Watergate cover-up by the evidence of his own tapes. But they revealed far more than that. `Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general - these are the enemies of strong societies,' he told his aide Bob Haldeman. `That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they're trying to destroy us!...You know it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalising marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them?'
  In the spring of 1976, weeks after resigning as the British prime minister, Harold Wilson summoned two young BBC journalists whom he scarcely knew and asked them to investigate MI5's machinations. `I see myself as a big fat spider in the corner of the room,' he said. `Sometimes I speak when I'm asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.'
  Strange Days Indeed tells the story of how the paranoia exemplified by Wilson and Nixon became the defining characteristic of western politics and culture in the 1970s - a decade in which the leader of the British Liberal Party stood trial for conspiracy to murder and the West German chancellor discovered that his personal assistant was an East German agent.

  Strange Days Indeed will vividly evoke the characters, events and atmosphere of an era in which the truth was far stranger than even the most outlandish fiction.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.25

  `If the 1960s were a wild weekend and the 1980s a hectic day at the office, the 1970s were a long Sunday evening in winter, with cold leftovers for supper and a power cut expected at any moment.'

  A jaw-droppingly brilliant account of how the seventies was defined by mass paranoia told with Francis Wheen's wonderfully acute sense of the absurd.

  The nostalgic whiff of the seventies evokes memories of loons and disco, Abba and Fawlty Towers. However, beneath the long hair it was really a theme park of mass paranoia.

  `Strange Days Indeed' tells the story of the decade that a young Francis Wheen walked into having pronounced he was dropping out to join the alternative society. Instead of the optimistic dreams of the sixties he found a world on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown, huddled over candles waiting for the next terrorist bomb, kidnapping or food shortage warning. Whether it was Nixon's demented behaviour in the White House, Harold Wilson's insistence that 'they' (whoever 'they' were) were out to get him, or the trial of Rupert Bear, it is a story almost too fantastical to be true. With his brilliantly acute sense of the absurd Francis Wheen slices through the pungent melange of mistrust and conspiratorial fever to expose the sickly form of a decade in which nations were brought to a sclerotic halt by power cuts, military coups, economic anarchy and the arrival of Uri Geller.

  Since the Great Crash of our generation barely a week passes without some allusion to that distant decade. As we are consumed by the heady stench of our own collective meltdown, there is no better guide than Francis Wheen to shine his Swiftian light on the true nature of the era that has returned to haunt us. Amidst the chaos `Strange Days Indeed' is an hilarious and jaw-droppingly revealing chronicle of the golden age of the paranoid style.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $4.19

  Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen. The nostalgic whiff of the seventies evokes memories of loons and disco, Abba and Fawlty Towers. However, beneath the long hair it was really a theme park of mass paranoia. Strange Days Indeed tells the story of the decade that a young Francis Wheen walked into having pronounced he was dropping out to join the alternative society. Instead of the optimistic dreams of the sixties he found a world on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown, huddled over candles waiting for the next terrorist bomb, kidnapping or food shortage warning. Whether it was Nixon's demented behaviour in the White House, Harold Wilson's insistence that 'they' (whoever 'they' were) were out to get him, or the trial of Rupert Bear, it is a story almost too fantastical to be true. With his brilliantly acute sense of the absurd Francis Wheen slices through the pungent melange of mistrust and conspiratorial fever to expose the sickly form of a decade in which nations were brought to a sclerotic halt by power cuts, military coups, economic anarchy and the arrival of Uri Geller. Since the Great Crash of our generation barely a week passes without some allusion to that distant decade. As we are consumed by the heady stench of our own collective meltdown, there is no better guide than Francis Wheen to shine his Swiftian light on the true nature of the era that has returned to haunt us. Amidst the chaos Strange Days Indeed is an hilarious and jaw-droppingly revealing chronicle of the golden age of the paranoid style.