Publisher's Synopsis
The eighties were New Zealand's adolescence. After years of control and repression, we were released when one night Rob Muldoon had one gin too many and called a snap election. He lost and David Lange won. Suddenly a new generation was in charge and blowing raspberries at the US. It went to our heads. We suddenly had new freedoms - gays were no longer criminals; you could make or lose a fortune, and make another one. We suddenly had new pleasures, not least a decent cup of coffee. We had good music and terrible clothes, heady triumphs and dismal failures. There were cowboys in the sharemarket, champagne corks popping, misbehaviour and ugly mirror-glass towers everywhere.Then there was the Rainbow Warrior. Goat farming. Tax-loss movies. Forex dealers having food fights in restaurants. Feminists throwing eggs at the Governor-General. Merchant bankers as national heroes. The unfortunate experiment at National Women's. The Bob Jones party. Stockbrokers modelling shirts in glossy magazines. Kiwifruit with everything in restaurants. Kohanga reo. Personal growth. And terrible clothes?In The Dirty Decade, Stephen Stratford gives us an entertaining portrait in words and pictures of the adol;This is his cheerfully one-eyed eyewitness account of those years. The Dirty Decade includes a timeline listing significant events, New Zealand films, bestselling books and hit songs of each year, time-warp recipes, and many unpublished photographs documenting the changes of the decade.
