Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s: The "Crisis of Confidence" Speech of July 15, 1979

by Daniel Horowitz

In a decade of constant crises, perhaps the most formidable challenge that Americans faced in the 1970s was the energy shortage. An era of inexpensive and seemingly unlimited supplies of oil came to an end with the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and strained the nation's economy for the remainder of the decade. In his "Crisis of Confidence" speech, one of the most remarkable political addresses in American history, President Jimmy Carter drew connections between America's increasing dependence on foreign oil and what he considered larger, more spiritual problems that plagued the nation. Through carefully selected documents that bring together the high-level White House decision-making process and the national conversation about energy, Daniel Horowitz helps students understand both the crises of the 1970s and the continuing relationship between American economic and foreign policy. An introduction by the editor, headnotes to documents, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography provide further pedagogical support.

Genres: History

203 pages, Paperback

First published August 24, 2004

About the author

Daniel Horowitz is a historian whose work focuses on the history of consumer culture and social criticism in the U.S. At Smith College (1989–2012), he directed the American studies program for 18 years and was, for a time, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies. Before coming to Smith, he taught at Scripps College in Claremont, California (1972–88), where he eventually was Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Professor of History and Biography.
For 2010–11, he was the Ray A. Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and Huntington Library. He has also taught at the University of Michigan (1983–84), Carleton College (1980), Harvard (1964–66 and 1967–70), Skidmore College (1970–72), and Wellesley College (1966–67).
Among the honors Horowitz has received are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Humanities Center; an appointment as Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University; and for 2008–09 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1997, the American Studies Association awarded him the Constance Rourke Prize for his 1996 article “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly. The American Studies Association awarded him its 2003 Mary C. Turpie Prize for “outstanding abilities and achievement in American Studies teaching, advising, and program development at the local or regional level.”
Among his publications are The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (1985), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding academic books of 1985; Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (1994); Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, Modern Feminism (1998); The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (2004), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding books of 2004 and winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Prize for the best book published in the humanities in 2004 by a university press; Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (2012); On the Cusp: Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change (2015); and Happier?: The History of A Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America (2018).
His book on the Reality TV show “Shark Tank” will be published by University of North Carolina Press in late 2020. He has edited two books for Bedford: Suburban Life in the 1950s: Selections from Vance Packard’s Status Seekers (1995) and Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970: The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech of July 15, 1979.