This volume argues that the 1980s is the most significant American literary decade in the late twentieth century.

Introduction: the screen and the page D. Quentin Miller; 1. Magic, meet realism: world mythology on American soil D. Quentin Miller; 2. Youth culture on the skids: Generation X and Brat Pack fiction Kevin L. Ferguson; 3. Womanism Kameelah Martin; 4. Revisiting masculinity Josef Benson; 5. The ghosts of history (1): the Holocaust reexamined S. Lillian Kremer; 6. The ghosts of history (2): narrative authority and contemporaneous social subjectivity in the neo-slave narrative Beauty Bragg; 7. The enduring literary legacy of the Vietnam War Walter W. Hölbling; 8. 'How did I get here?': Roth, Updike, and the embarrassment of riches Kathy Knapp; 9. A prison nation and freedom dreams: 1980s literature of incarceration Katy Ryan; 10. The horror! The Stephen King industry Carl Sederholm; 11. Poetry, language, and history in the 1980s Thomas Gardner; 12. 'An imaginary story': comic books and graphic novels in the 1980s Brian Cremins; 13. 'Pop operas, or Broadway sells T-Shirts! Colleen Rua; 14. Working-class fiction and 'dirty realism' Evan Brier; 15. The surge of Latino lit Ilan Stavans; 16. The culture wars and the canon debate Mary Jo Bona; 17. 'We are the world, we are the children': 1980s world literature bears witness to US-American exceptionalism and imperialism Nicole Sparling; 18. Literature in an age of plague: the AIDS epidemic Tyler Bradway; 19. Libertarian fictions: violence and the free-market radicalism of 1980s literature Thomas Heise; 20. Neoconservative ascendancy, the Reagan Age, and literature's response Bob Batchelor; 21. The literature of high finance in the 1980s Leigh Claire LaBerge; 22. From nuclear fear to shades of gray: the end of the Cold War Steven Belletto.