Born in 1989

If you were born in 1989, you were born in the year the Cold War ended—not with the bang that everyone had been dreading, but with young people with sledgehammers chipping away at the Berlin Wall while crowds cheered on both sides. It was the most astonishing news footage in years, and the American networks stayed live through the night to broadcast it. The Soviet empire was crumbling in real time.

*Batman* with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson was the summer blockbuster that defined blockbuster marketing—the bat symbol everywhere, merchandise in every store. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in March and dumped eleven million gallons of oil, the environmental disaster playing out in anguished footage. Tiananmen Square and the image of the man in front of the tank.

*Do the Right Thing* by Spike Lee was the film that made everyone argue. Taylor Swift was born in December, though nobody knew yet. Madonna's "Like a Prayer" was controversial enough to get her Pepsi deal cancelled and make the song bigger.

Game Boy arrived in the US in July. The S&L scandal was costing taxpayers hundreds of billions. New Kids on the Block were making teenage girls scream again for the first time since Beatlemania.

The decade was ending and the country felt both victorious—communism was losing—and slightly uncertain what winning had actually meant.