Retro Hell: Life in the ’70s and ’80s, from Afros to Zotz

Valley girls. Quaaludes. Howard Cosell. K-tel Records. In today’s pop -culture spin cycle, the seventies and eighties rule — as evidenced by everything from reruns on Nickelodeon and VH-1 to Brady Bunch movies and New Wave theme parties.Now, at last, there’s Retro Hell — a sassy, knowing travelogue through the best and worst of these unforgettable decades. Orchestrated by the editor of Ben Is Dead, winner of the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards 1995 Best ‘Zine of the Year, Retro Hell both sends up and celebrates the cultural landscape of our misspent youth. Thirty Ben Is Dead writers and hundreds of readers helped assemble the nearly 1,000 sharply opinionated alphabetical entries and loopily authoritative sidebars. The icons, the eccentricities, the excesses, the kitsch — it’s all here, from alligator shirts, breakdancing, Earth Shoes, and Farrah Fawcett to bumper stickers, eight-tracks, Schoolhouse Rock, and John Travolta.

Illustrated throughout with 100 black-and-white photographs and illustrations, Retro Hell is the definitive compendium of recent pop-culture arcana — a fresh, funny look back for everyone who survived the seventies and eighties.