There are many interesting passages in this retrospective analysis. The sections on music and movies were the best. There are also lots of boring sections. The layout of the book is odd. We jump around from music to politics to movies to sports. It feels disconnected. My biggest criticism of this book is how the cultural contributions of black people are largely ignored. There’s a small section on Tupac, but this is a decade when black culture became mainstream.

Very interesting book. You can tell a lot of research went into this book.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

As someone who lived through the '90s, I didn't really learn much from what was covered, but Klosterman does a good job of contextualizing why the decade was the end of a certain way of life. I will admit, it's difficult once this book gets towards the latter chapters, because I know the tragedy that will truly mark the decade's end. But as Klosterman says in the book, people still went to see Titanic despite knowing the ship sunk, so there's no reason to skip the pleasures of The Nineties just because it ends badly.

A typically fascinating book by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman always finds his own take on events without coming across as intentionally contrarian. And that's even more important in this overview of the Nineties, which ultimately lacks a single unifying theme; it's more of a survey of different key events and changes that occurred during that decade than a thesis of that decade.

That might lead to an aimless book in the hands of a different author, but Klosterman is consistently fascinating even if his mind isn't leading to a singular destination.

If anything, Klosterman's analysis is consistent with the decade itself, which was transitional in nature - it didn't "stand" for anything specific but provided a connective tissue to get us past the Eighties, and in many ways stands alone for mores and morals that don't fit comfortably in any other identifiable time period.

If I were hoping for anything more, it'd be more of a showing of Klosterman's humor, which with a few exceptions (look for his take on the "clear" beverages such as Crystal Pepsi and Tab Clear) isn't put into play. But we've been heading for a while to this destination with Klosterman, who started as a lone pro-KISS voice literally in the prairie and has developed a style that's less showy but more thoughtful.

Read The Nineties to spend time with a unique mind. You don't have to agree with all of Klosterman's takes to fully enjoy them and come away working hard to prove that he's wrong (and probably failing). It's hard to imagine a topic where Klosterman's views wouldn't be welcome or accomplished.

I received an advance copy of, The Nineties, by Chuck Klosterman. I found this book to be dry and boring. It had stuff from the 90's like Oprah, Michael Jordan, vcrs, Tiger Woods, and others. I found this book a little too political. Growing up as a teenager in the 90's, life was more light heated,