Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s The "Crisis of Confidence" Speech of July 15, 1979

by Horowitz, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780312401221
• ISBN10: 0312401221
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-24
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

In a decade of constant crises, perhaps the most formidable challenge that Americans faced in the 1970s was the energy shortage. An era of inexpensive and seemingly unlimited supplies of oil came to an end with the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and strained the nation's economy for the remainder of the decade. In his "Crisis of Confidence" speech, one of the most remarkable political addresses in American history, President Jimmy Carter drew connections between America's increasing dependence on foreign oil and what he considered larger, more spiritual problems that plagued the nation. Through carefully selected documents that bring together the high-level White House decision-making process and the national conversation about energy, Daniel Horowitz helps students understand both the crises of the 1970s and the continuing relationship between American economic and foreign policy. An introduction by the editor, headnotes to documents, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography provide further pedagogical support.

Author Biography

DANIEL HOROWITZ is professor of American studies and history at Smith College. His scholarly work focuses on the cultural, social, and intellectual history of the United States. He is the author of Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique (1998), Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (1994), and The Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940, which was selected by Choice Magazine as one of the outstanding academic books of 1984. His most recent work, The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1919–1979 (2003), examines how leading American writers worried about the dangers of national prosperity from WWI until the energy crisis of the 1970s.

Table of Contents

Introduction : Jimmy Carter and an age of diminished expectations	p. 1
The documents	p. 31
Carter declares energy crisis the "moral equivalent of war"	p. 33
Religion, materialism, and leadership : traditions on which Carter drew	p. 56
Debates within the administration	p. 78
Preparation and delivery of July 15, 1979, speech	p. 103
Reactions to the speech	p. 120
Looking back	p. 172
A chronology of events surrounding the energy crisis of the 1970s (1973-1981)	p. 185
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