Born in 1979

If you were born in 1979, you came into the year that bookended the Carter presidency with twin disasters. In March, Three Mile Island's partial nuclear meltdown sent Pennsylvania residents into a panicked few days that put nuclear power's promise into serious question. And in November, Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran and took fifty-two Americans hostage, an humiliation that played on the evening news every single day for the next fourteen months.

Carter wore a cardigan and told America it had a malaise, which was honest and fatal. Gas was getting toward a dollar a gallon and the lines at the pump were back. And yet: Apocalypse Now was in theaters, a Vietnam masterpiece arriving just four years after the last helicopter.

*Alien* made summer going to the movies into something terrifying. *Kramer vs. Kramer* made everyone cry.

Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and the Knack's "My Sharona" were on the radio—new wave and power pop breaking through the disco. The Walkman went on sale in the US in June and transformed the idea of private listening. The original cast album of *Sweeney Todd* won the Tony.

Larry Bird and Magic Johnson played in the NCAA championship game that millions watched, launching college basketball's greatest rivalry. Inflation was thirteen percent. The country was ready for something different, and something different was ready for the country.