1If you were alert back then, this refresher may be unnecessary, even laughable. If you were not alert then, this may just be laughable. But it also may help to clarify references in the book about things of that moment. In 1985: The United States population is 240 million. The Cold War is still on, though Mikhail Gorbachev has just become the Soviet leader. Ronald Reagan is president. Other major political figures include Walter “Fritz” Mondale, Democratic presidential nominee the year before; Geraldine Ferraro, his vice- presidential running mate; and presidential hopefuls/Senators Gary Hart and John Glenn (the latter a former astronaut). Ed Koch is mayor of New York City.

2David Garth is a top media consultant for political candidates.

3Top-rated TV shows include Dynasty, Dallas (though it has been several years since the drama of “Who Shot J.R.?” gripped the TV-watching nation), The A-Team, Cheers, and Hill Street Blues. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings are the nightly network news anchors. The MacNeillLehrer NewsHour is, as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer years later will be, public television’s respected, low-rated evening news program. Televangelism is enjoying a heyday: leading practitioners include Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, and Oral Roberts. Howard Cosell has recently retired after many years as TV’s most recognizable sports voice. The show Entertainment Tonight and the cable network MTV, both born a few years earlier, are runaway successes. Two of the most successful TV commercial campaigns are American Express’s series about farflung tourists losing travelers’ checks and Wisk detergent’s spot about “ring around the collar” (about which my father wrote a provocative and funny essay called “The Parable of the Ring Around the Collar”).

4The Mac computer is one year old, USA Today three, People magazine ten.

5Dr. Ruth Westheimer hosts a popular radio call-in show, offering sex advice with cheer and grandmotherly frankness. African Americans are known as blacks.

6Martina Navratilova is the world’s best female tennis player. Trivial Pursuit is a top-selling board game. Certain entertainers to whom my father refers—e.g., comedians Shecky Greene, Red Buttons, and Milton Berle, singer Dionne Warwick, TV talk-show host David Susskind—are past their prime, even then.

7A.P.