The Nineties - Season 1 (2017)

Rarely does a decade begin as dramatically as the Nineteen Nineties. The world was just catching its breath after the fall of the Berlin Wall when a series of extraordinary events crowded across the world stage: The collapse of East European communism, the freeing of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, the reunification of Germany, the Persian Gulf War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the United States the election of Bill Clinton over George Bush signaled a political changing of the guard as the Greatest Generation was ushered aside by the Baby Boomers. America's perennial Topic A, race relations, assumed even greater significance as controversial verdicts in two Los Angles trials revealed a continuing divide but the increasing election of black public officials and the growing importance of African-American culture provided reason for hope. Domestic terrorism was a scourge throughout the decade. An attempt to bring down the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York failed; unfortunately, a similar effort aimed at a Federal office building in Oklahoma City did not. Grunge, Hip-hop and boy-bands defined the decade musically as artists like Nirvana, Tupac Shakur and N'Sync provided an almost dizzying variety of music. Television programming benefited from increasing candor and creativity as a host of cable networks appealed to seemingly every interest and taste. Unraveling the mystery of Twin Peaks was a national obsession and Jerry Seinfeld and Tony Soprano become household names. And of course, everything from culture to commerce was irrevocably altered as the world went on-line with the invention of the Internet and the World Wide Web. AOL sought to connect everyone, Microsoft seemed to dominate the world and Y2K threatened to bring it all to a crashing halt.