About this item
Between 1971 and 1979, All in the Family was more than just a wildly popular television sitcom that routinely drew 50 million viewers weekly. It was also a touchstone of American life, so much so that the living room chairs of the two main characters have spent the last 40 years on display at the Smithsonian. How did a show this controversial and boundary-breaking manage to become so widely beloved?Those Were the Days is the first full-length study of this remarkable television program. Created by Norman Lear and produced by Bud Yorkin, All in the Family dared to address such taboo topics as rape, abortion, menopause, homosexuality, and racial prejudice in a way that no other sitcom had before. Through a close analysis of the sitcom's four main characters - boorish bigot Archie Bunker, his devoted wife Edith, their feminist daughter Gloria, and her outspoken liberal husband Mike - Jim Cullen demonstrates how All in the Family was able to bridge the generation gap and appeal to a broad spectrum of American viewers in an age when a network broadcast model of television created a shared national culture.
About the Author
Jim Cullen was born in Queens, New York, and attended public schools on Long Island. He received his B.A. in English from Tufts University, and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in American Civilization from Brown University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Harvard, Brown and Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently chair of the History Department at the Fieldston School in New York City and a book review editor at the History News Network. He is married to historian Lyde Cullen Sizer and has four children.
Jim is the author of a dozen books, which include "Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions" (Oxford University Press, 2013) , "The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation" (Oxford, 2003) and "Born in the USA: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition" (HarperCollins, 1997) . His next book, "Alternating Currents: The United States Since 1945," is slated for publication by Wiley-Blackwell in 2016.
