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Looking back at "The Nineties" with Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman's new book "The Nineties"
Chuck Klosterman's new book "The Nineties"

It was the decade of Nirvana's "Nevermind" and the tectonic shift away from hair metal to grunge.

The era of network television dominance, from “Friends” and “Seinfeld”, to the Clarence Thomas hearings, and the OJ Simpson trial.

The decade also saw everything from the beginnings of the internet in homes, the baseball strike of 1994, to Zima taking the nation by storm.  Remember that?

All those cultural phenomena are dissected in Chuck Klosterman's new book "The Nineties".

His work goes far beyond pop-culture fluff. Klosterman, a former writer for the Akron Beacon Journal argues that the Nineties were the last decade where we controlled technology, instead of tech; controlling us.

He also makes the point that the decade saw a wholesale malaise among the American middle class, even though for many, life was pretty good.

Klosterman is the author of nearly a dozen books, has written for Esquire, The New Yorker, and ESPN, and tonight will be speaking, in person, at the Parma Snow Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library,

Producer Drew Maziasz caught up with Klosterman, and began by asking why tackle the decade of the Nineties in one fell swoop.

- Chuck Klosterman, Author, "The Nineties"

Drew Maziasz is a coordinating producer for the "Sound of Ideas" and also serves as the show’s technical producer.