An instant New York Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history. It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.

At no time since the rock & roll explosion of the 1960s did music matter more than in the 1990s—the decade of grunge, gangsta rap and Britney Spears. The Nineties might have kicked off with Vanilla Ice, but music changed forever the following year when Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" exploded onto the airwaves, giving birth to the alternative nation. The decade spawned dozens of new stars (Pearl Jam, Eminem, Dave Matthews, Christina Aguilera and Jay-Z among them); top artists from U2 to Madonna made their most adventurous records; and hip-hop icons Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls met violent ends. Rolling Stone was there to tell all those stories and more—and The '90s collects the best of them: the last major interview with Kurt Cobain, conducted by David Fricke three months before the Nirvana singer took his life in 1994; Jonathan Gold's 1993 trip to Compton to check in with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre; Carrie Fisher's intimate one-on-one with Madonna following her 1991 film, Truth or Dare; Kim Neely partying with a riot-starting Guns n' Roses in 1991; Anthony Bozza riding along with an Ecstasy-gobbling Eminem in 1999; and, that same year, Steven Daly's visit to the bedroom of a teenage Britney Spears. Packed with over fifty stories, portraits by the biggest names in photography including Mark Seliger, David LaChapelle and Steven Meisel, and a guide to the decade's hundred greatest albums, The '90s is a definitive look back at the decade that rocked.

After a bump on the head a high school senior who loves the Nineties wakes up to find himself transported back in time.

How can you define a decade? Through television, of course. The 1990s featured many memorable TV moments, providing a fascinating picture of the decade. In this book, 99 episodes across all major television genres are discussed--from police procedurals, hangout sitcoms, and cartoons to game shows and much more. Some of these episodes became iconic and helped define the '90s; other episodes reflect events in the world at the time.

The 1990s was an amazing decade for movies, witnessing the release of dozens of incredible films, including The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Fargo, Jurassic Park, and so many more. Despite this embarrassment of riches, author Riley Webster believes this decade has never received as much praise or as many kudos as it deserves—until now. Whether you’re a serious cinephile, a casual viewer, or merely seeking a heavy dose of 1990s nostalgia, this is the book for you.