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FACTS ABOUT THIS
DECADE
Population:
281,421,906 (2000 Census)
Unemployment: 5.8 million,
or 4.2% (Sept 99)
National Debt: $5,413.l
Million (1997)
Average Salary: $13.37/hr
(1999)
Teacher's Salary: $39,347
(1998)
Minimum Wage: $5.15/hr
(1997)
Life Expectancy: Male 73.1
Female 79.1(1997)
Auto Deaths: 49,772 (1997)
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Kingwood
College Library
American Cultural
History
1990-1999
The 1990s
was truly the electronic age. We would not have been able to publish
our decades web site if it weren't for the Internet. The World
Wide Web was born in 1992, changing the way we communicate (email), spend
our money (online gambling, stores), and do business (e-commerce).
By 1994, 3 million people were online. And by 1998, this figure increased
to 100 million people. It is estimated that by 2001, some 1 billion
people will be connected. Internet lingo like plug-ins, BTW (by
the way), GOK (God only knows), IMHO (in my humble opinion), FAQS, SPAM, FTP,
ISP, and phrases like "See you online" or "The server's down"
or "Bill Gates" became part of our everyday vocabulary. We signed our
mail with a :-) smile,
a ;-) wink,
or a :-* kiss.
And - everyone has a cell phone (even Jason
at right!)
Art & Architecture | Best Sellers | Education | Events | Fads & Fashion | Historic Documents | Music | People & Personalities | Television | Theater & Film
The purpose of
this web and library guide is to
help the user gain a broad understanding and appreciation for the culture and
history of the 1990s. In a very small way, this is a bibliographic essay.
While we cannot link to everything, we have attempted to find areas of special
interest and to select information that we will hold dear tomorrow - movies we
still watch, songs we sing, food we enjoy, events that move us, people we admire.
To see the whole
picture, we encourage users to browse all the way through this page
and then visit the suggested links for more information on the decade. 
We believe the best way to immerse oneself in a topic is to use both Internet
and the library. Maybe the most valuable information is best read in books,
or viewed on video, or heard on audio cassettes. More photographs, more
information, more depth. But then, there is information that will
be found only on the Internet; a journal, a diary, or photographs like those
on our pages. If you can add a valuable site or information to this page,
we invite you to write. It is
hard to get a perspective at this early date for the nineties. Historians
in future decades will judge. Thanks for the many, many visits and
letters we have already received. Writing these decade pages has been
an enjoyable experience for us. Have a good time!
ART and
ARCHITECTURE
Important architects
and their work of this decade include Robert
Venturi (winner of the coveted
Pritzker Award), and Richard
Meyer (Getty Museum). 
During this ten years theme
restaurants (Planet Hollywood)
and casinos (New York-New York in
Vegas) have proliferated. Casinos
covered the coastline along Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Universal design has made homes
and offices user friendly. Health
care and elder care homes were big business for builders and architects
during this decade. Green
design products have included bamboo
flooring, a resurgence of linoleum
and other environmentally
friendly products.
The internet
has had a huge influence on products with
almost every design
company having a presence on the web. "Mid-century
modern" (old 50s and 60s style) made a
big furnishings comeback. Feng
Shui was in. Television's Martha
Stewart, became the guru of home crafts and design.
Museums around the
country have had long lines at exhibits. Here are a few of
my favorite1990s artists and sites:
BEST SELLERS
Reading entire books
online became available through such sites as Project
Gutenberg. Audio
books became the rage - taking a trip? Listen to a book in the car.
The biggest trend in book selling during the 1990s included online bookstores
and publishers like amazon.com. Mega-bookstores like Borders or Barnes and Noble drove the smaller ones out
of business. The price of books sky-rocketed and half-priced
books (used books) became popular. Specialty book stores (Mysteries, Science Fiction,etc.) featured
specialists, unique collections, and author visits. Oprah
Winfrey's picks encouraged a new readership and culminated in Oprah's
Book Club.
Big money authors rushed to the web with reviews, bios, etc. and included
Sue Grafton (A - O of her mystery series
published by 1999.) John
Grisham (5 of the top ten spots selling over 40,000,000
copies), and Michael
Crichton (3 top ten spots). Other best selling authors include Tony
Morrison, Amy Tan,
Sara Paretsky, Tony
Hillerman, Danielle
Steele, and Tom Clancy.
Top selling books included The
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Cold
Mountain by Charles Frazier, Into
Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Memoirs
of a Geisha by Authur S. Golden, and Divine
Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. Non fiction self
help books continued to sell (Chicken
Soup for the Soul - and all its antecedents and websites and on and on and
on!) . Sugar Busters and The
Zone diet books were top sellers.
Children's Book Awards
for the nineties:
Newbery Award Winners - Begun in 1922 (most distinguished children's book of the previous year)
1990: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
1991: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
1992: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
1993: Missing May by Cynthia Rylant
1994: The Giver by Lois Lowry
1995: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
1996: The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
1997: The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
1998: Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
1999: Holes by Louis Sachar
Caldecott Award Winners - Begun in 1938 (most distinguished children's picture book of the previous year)
1990:Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young
1991: Black and White by David Macaulay
1992: Tuesday by David Wiesner
1993: Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully
1994: Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say; text: edited by Walter Lorraine
1995: Smoky Night, illustrated by David Diaz; text: Eve Bunting
1996: Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann
1997: Golem by David Wisniewski
1998: Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinsky
1999: Snowflake Bentley, Illustrated by Mary Azarian; text by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
EVENTS
In the 1990's
the United States played the role of world policeman, sometimes alone but more
often in alliances. The decade began with Sadam Husein's invasion of Kuwait and
the resultant Gulf
War. In 1993 the war was in the African country of Somalia,
as the television images of starving children led to an attempt to oust the warlord,
General Adid. By September, 1994, the U.S. was once again sending troops to a
foreign country to overthrow a military dictatorship, this time in Haiti.
In 1996 about 20,000 American troops were deployed to Bosnia
as part of a NATO peace keeping force. In late March 1999, the U.S.
joined NATO in air strikes against Yugoslavia
in an effort to halt the Yugoslavian government's policy of ethnic cleansing in
its province of Kosovo. The decade was to end much as it began with U.S. forces
deployed in many countries, and the U.S. playing arbitrator, enforcer, and peace
keeper throughout the world.
The 90s have been called
the Merger Decade. On the domestic front some big issues were health
care, social
security reform, and gun control -
unresolved and debated during the whole decade. Violence and sex
scandals dominated the media starting with the Tailhook
affair in which Navy and Marine Corps fliers were accused of sexually abusing
26 women. President Clinton kept the gossip flowing as several women
accused him of sexual misconduct. The ten years ended with this president
narrowly surviving a
trial to remove him from office for perjury and obstruction of justice.
President Clinton's escapades were proving to be a
hindrance to his Vice President Al Gore's campaign for the oval office and
polls were reporting that 70% of the American people were saying that they were
"tired of the Clintons".
Violence seemed a part of
life. In 1992 South-Central Los Angeles rioted after four white policemen
were acquitted of video-taped assault charges for beating a black motorist,
Rodney King. 1993 brought terrorism to the American shores as a bomb
was detonated in the garage beneath the World
Trade Center. That same month of February saw four agents of the U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms killed during an unsuccessful raid
on the Branch Davidian
cult compound in Waco, Texas led by David Koresh. Americans were glued
to their TV sets in 1995 as the football hero, O.J.
Simpson, was tried for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her male friend,
Ron Goldman. This trial pointed out the continued racial division in the
country as most blacks applauded the not guilty verdict while most whites thought
an obviously guilty man had gotten away with murder. 
The shock of the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19,1995,
was compounded by the revelation that the perpetrators were not foreign terrorists
but were U.S. citizens led by a U.S. Army veteran, Timothy
McVeigh. In the months between February 1996 and April 1999 there
were at least fourteen incidents of school
shootings with the most lethal being on April 20, 1999 when 14 students
and 1 teacher were killed and 23 wounded at Columbine
High School in Littleton, Colorado.
There was good news, too.
The booming economy led to
record low unemployment. Minimum
wage was increased to $5.15 an hour. The stock market reached an all
time high as individuals learned to buy and trade via the internet.
Americans enjoyed the country's affluence by traveling more (up 40% since
1986), by reveling in sporting events such as the Atlanta
Summer Olympics -1996, and by "consuming" as never before. America
faced the new millennium
with an open, diversified society, a functioning democracy, a healthy economy,
and the means and will, hopefully, to face and overcome its problems.
FADS & FASHION
For youth, the fashion
of the decade began with Grunge
on one hand and preppie on the other. Hip
Hop style was popular. 
Boys' jeans have grown bigger and bigger, worn low on the hips, and girls are
wearing bellbottoms and poor boy tops reminiscent of the 70's. Over $6 billion
was spent by fast food places on uniforms. Designers included Liz
Claiborne, DKNY, and
Tommy Hilfinger. Dress
down Fridays became commonplace and gradually developed into a more
casual work dress code altogether, with 53% of companies allowing casual dress
in 1998, up from 7 % in 1992. Khaki pants and polo shirts or denim shirts
were the work-place norm. New fabrics such as microfiber
and tencel competed with
the ever-popular cotton and linen. Consumer spending on clothing dropped
from 4.6% in 1990 to 1% in 1995. While interest
in health and nutrition increased,
obesity
was at a record high. Fads included Tae-bo,
in-line skates, beanie
babies, Furby,
Tickle Me Elmo, WWJD, Yo-yos,
tattoos and body
piercing, and the ubiquitous video games.
EDUCATION
About eighty-three and one-half percent of the population in 1999 completed four
years of high school as opposed to only forty-one percent in 1960, (see Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 119th ed., chart 249 online p. 9). Education
subject guides sprang up on the web. The Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, provided assistance
to disadvantaged students or pupils with limited proficiency in English and was
intended to improve instruction in areas like drug use prevention, math, and science.
ERIC (Educational Resources database) went
online. Ritalin
became the drug of choice for schools and parents alike as more students were
labeled ADD or ADHD. The BIG change
was that students could complete their education without coming on campus, through
Distance Education
Programs. In the classroom,
many schools required uniforms.
Hot issues in education included:
HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
The
Americans With Disabilities
Act, effective in July, 1990, began the decade on a
positive note by protecting the rights of all Americans with physical or mental
disabilities. Introduced first as a policy for the military, in September,
1993, a law called "
don't ask, don't
tell,"
directed people
to keep their sexuality hidden if they intended to stay in military careers.
An important
gun control bill
(now expired) aimed at protecting
all Americans became law in 1994. The Brady
Bill provides a five day waiting period when purchasing
a gun. In January, 1994, the North
American Free Trade Agreement was intended to eliminate
barriers to trade between neighboring countries, particularly Mexico and Canada.
In 1994, Republicans won a
majority in Congress
for the first time in forty years. Part of the reason for the party's success
was a ten point plan called the Contract
with America which outlined a promise to reshape
government by decentralizing federal authority, giving states and local government
more control over taxes, and social programs, and by improving the way government
did business. Welfare
reform, began in 1988 with the federal Family
Support Act which initiated changes such as directing all states to phase
in comprehensive welfare-to-work programs
by 1990, and giving states more control over welfare expenses. This program
continued in 1996, when the controversial Aid
to Families with Dependent Children Act was abolished
as part of the new block grant called Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). TANF
converts state funding to a fixed level, directs that minor parents of dependent
children can only receive TANF funds if they were living at home or in another
adult supervised setting, and limits federal aid in a lifetime to five years for
families receiving welfare.
In March, 1996, a bill was
passed giving the president line
item veto authority allowing the president to veto specific
parts of a spending bill while approving the rest, thus increasing presidential
power. The bill was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June 1998.
On December 31, 1999, at noon, the United State returned
management and control of the Panama
Canal and the Canal Zone to Panama.
This ends a remarkable period of 85 years in which the United States' control
over the waterway served as a powerful reminder of the strength of the U.S. in
the Western Hemisphere. The handover has not been without controversy.
BOOKS
AY 67 .N5 W7 World Almanac and Book of Facts
Provides a yearly summary of world events.
E169.1 .A471872 America in the Twentieth Century 1990-1999
A look at the first part of the decade.
E839.5 .H57 Historic Documents of ...
Introduction provides background information, and an account of following developments.
PEOPLE & PERSONALITIES
A development in the nineties
which made politics more interesting to the average person was the cross over
from the business world and the entertainment world to politics. Beginning
with President
Ronald Reagan, the stage was set for performers like
Jesse Ventura,
Warren
Beatty and Jane
Alexander to become more publicly involved in government.
Businessmen Ross
Perot and Donald
Trump felt they had abilities which made them natural
leaders and viable candidates for public office. Politicians have always
had an audience, but during the nineties colorful personalities like
Newt Gingrich,
Pat Buchanan, Rev.
Jesse Jackson and Rush
Limbaugh have made politics a "born again" entertainment
forum for the average American.
Prominent in other government
positions were Justice
Clarence Thomas, of the Supreme Court, Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, also on the Supreme Court. Dr.
Jocelyn Elders , a plain spoken and somewhat controversial
Surgeon General, made headlines with her position on sex education for teens.
Attorney General Janet Reno represented
the government position on many hotly debated legal issues. Secretary
of State, Madeline Albright
provided an American presence abroad. Military leader,
Colin Powell
was popular enough that he was considered a strong candidate for the presidency,
though he chose not to run for office.
Women achieved firsts.
Sally Ride and
Shannon Lucid
explored space.
Multiple births gave Bobbi McCaughey
the title of mom to the first set of surviving septuplets,
and Nkem Chukwu a
close second when she gave birth to octuplets in Houston, of whom
seven babies survived. The
number of multiple
births increased five fold from 1980 to 2000.
Dominating the world of technology were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Successful women included Oprah Winfrey and Martha
Stewart. Michael Jordon and Tiger Woods were heroes for all young
athletes. Two important
loses were Jackie
Kennedy to cancer and later her son, John F. Kennedy
in a plane crash.
BOOKS:
CT100 .C8 Current Biography Yearbook
Biographical
sketches on people from many fields.
CT120 .C663.
Newsmakers
Informative profiles of interesting people
E176 .W642. Who's Who in America
Yearly publication of noteworthy people
E176 .W6424 Who's Who in American Politics
People in the political arena.
JK1012 .A45. Almanac of American Politics
American politics, provides in-depth profiles and photographs governors & congressmen/women.
MUSIC
There were
more music choices available than ever, although radio
stations tended to find a niche and stick to it rather than playing a
mix. Latino music
grew in popularity. Country became more mainstream, and Grunge
and Gansta appeared. R&B
and hip-hop remained popular, as did movie
soundtracks. Mariah Carey and
Boyz II Men
led the charts with "One
Sweet Day." Selena
was the top Latin singer until her untimely death in 1995. Other popular
artists included Hootie
& the Blowfish, Alanis Morrisette,
Janet Jackson, Garth
Brooks, Celine Dion and Madonna.
The Spice
Girls were a group created by the music industry for their diversity and
sex appeal.
The recording industry faced
severe tribulation as CD burners became commonplace. It was easy
to make a high quality copy
of a CD. Napster, Morpheus and Kazaa offered online file sharing,
in effect offering free downloads of music to anyone wanting to copy it.
The recording industry, seeing falling sales, fought back with lawsuits.
In 1993,
Gordon Shaw published a study on the Mozart Effect, a correlation
between classical music and mathematical aptitude He discovered
that college students and rats improve test scores by as much as
30% after listening to the music.
We have
attempted to give you (thanks to Lori Whitley and Maggie Whitley) the more important
music
of the '90s and a sampling of musicians that define the decade.
You may have your favorites who are not listed.
TELEVISION
Television graced 98%
of the households in the U.S. in 1998 (according to the Statistical Abstract chart
910, online p. 5) with the average viewer spending seven hours a day watching
'the tube'. In 1996, the television industry announced a TV
Parental Guideline rating system. News or news
magazine shows like 60
Minutes, 20/20,
and Dateline NBC were
popular. As cable expanded to include 74% of
U.S. households, it gave rise to networks dedicated to a particular theme
such as sports, nature,
golf, cooking,
women, history, and science
fiction. CNN had live coverage
of the Gulf War in 1991. And, did you, too, stay up
to hear Dave
Letterman's List? The industry continued to push the
envelop with hot topics like:
10 MOST
POPULAR SHOWS OF THE DECADE
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THEATER & FILM
Once again, revivals
were big hits on Broadway and around the country. Andrew
Lloyd Webber continued throughout the decade with Cats.
Musicals
(Les Misérables)
continued to be popular in theaters but nearly disappeared on film - even Evita
was a financial flop. Mega-movie
houses sprouted up - with up to 24 theaters in each. Dollar movies went
to a Dollar and a Half! Videos
came out right on the heels of movies and the price for renting or buying was
affordable.
Academy
Award Winning Movies
