Autumn and Everything After: The Murder of John Lennon, Evolution of Bruce Springsteen and the Birth of the Reagan Era Paperback – 10 November 2020

Autumn and Everything After by Mike Derrico is about three consequential lives that played out on the national stage in the fall of 1980. Like a modern day Vasari, Derrico follows John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, and Bruce Springsteen through the last days of the 1970s into the early days of the 80s. The narrative weaves these three stories together illustrating how their actions influenced the broader culture and how that very culture reflected itself back to them in myriad ways. Two-thirds of Derrico’s subjects, John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen obviously are both pop stars of the highest magnitude, but how does President Reagan fit in? What could possibly be left to say about these three very influential and very written about people? These were the questions in which I came at Autumn with.Derrico’s book is something of a pop cultural and political investigation into the fall of 1980. This was the year ultraconservative Ronald Reagan was elected president by a landslide, John Lennon was killed by a deranged fan, and Bruce Springsteen became a political activist through his exposure to union leaders and wounded veterans. Arguably, this was the end of the idealistic 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s neocon era. It was a time when the liberals lost control of the national conversation and Americans wanted a change from the prolonged Iranian hostage crisis, stagflation followed by worsening inflation, and an oil shortage that created long lines at the gas pump, Americans couldn't imagine their lives could get worse. In 1980 Reagan’s populist message and won out over President Jimmy Carter’s pragmatic realism.I learned a lot from reading Autumn. With a multitude of well researched facts and converging timelines Derrico builds his portrait of the fall of 1980 by giving us some background of the individual and overlapping lives of Lennon, Springsteen, and Reagan throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Without giving too much away, it was surprising to read that after Reagan was shot in 1981 by a deranged fan (of actress Jodie Foster) that Democrat and House Speaker Tip O’Neill visited the hospital, kneeled down beside an ailing Reagan to read Psalms, and prayed for him--a far cry from the knives out conduct of today’s politicians. While this was happening Reagan's friend Senator Paul Laxalt was cynically exploiting the shooting, advocating for passing tax cuts to “win one for the Gipper”. Reagan didn’t consider tougher gun laws after being asked about Lennon’s death by reporters. He stubbornly refused to reconsider the gun laws after he himself was shot and his press secretary James Brady was shot in the head. It wasn’t until many years later in 1994 after he was out of office did he stand up to the gun lobby. Derrico takes us through the last year of John Lennon’s life, coming out of his 1970s retirement, 40 years old and ready to find his place in the contemporary music landscape. We learn about Springsteen’s work ethic and how he decided to take on some social responsibility with his newfound fame.While the book does a deep examination of these three cultural figures, what emerges is less about the three individuals and more of an enjoyable, highly readable portrait of an era very much unlike our own. Where political norms and institutions held sway over one another and the voting public. The last quarter of the book attempts to tie together the broad arc of how Reagan and his cohort are at the root of today’s toxic political rancor. Derrico takes every opportunity throughout to make comparisons to today’s GOP, namely Trump. Many readers may find it heavy-handed as to be obvious. He takes particular umbrage at the GOP’s odious claims to Ronald Reagan, despite the fact that the GOP is distorted beyond recognition. While I may agree with Derrico’s excoriation of the modern GOP, I don’t think all the Trump writing necessarily fits, he’s honest about his bias from the start, yet he fairly and evenly writes about the events of Reagan’s 1980 without nostalgia or being disparaging. That may turn off Trump fans who came for the classic rock history reporting.As I mentioned at the top, I was skeptical about what there was left to write about these three people and why specifically these three people? Most good writing comes out of an obsession. As Derrico writes in the introduction, the book’s subjects have loomed larger than life in Derrico’s (literally) photographic memory. Those sensations of being a fifth-grader in the fall of 1980 were something he had to return to and make sense of throughout his life. The story coincidentally is close to home. My son remotely began his fifth-grade year in quarantine during the fall of 2020, living through Covid-19, sixteen percent unemployment, the climax of Trump’s awful presidency, and a whole host of things he saw on the news that I can’t even remember. I’m writing this on Inauguration Day after the swearing in of the 46th President of the United States Joe Biden Jr. On Inauguration Day forty years ago in 1981, Ronald Reagan was being sworn in as the 40th President at a time in which an overwhelming majority of citizens prided themselves on a peaceful transfer of power. It would be a positive thing if younger people who weren’t around yet knew it wasn’t always like this.

I really enjoyed the book. Derrico did his homework. You will learn about these 3 men and specifically Lennon's murder, the assassination attempt on Reagan and you will get a better understanding of these 3 icons.

The author provides an interesting, thought provoking look into a slice of time when three people of impact converged in a kind of beginning/end of a historical era.The book is written in a style that is very engaging and almost conversational. It is filled with numerous moments that insist the reader turn the page in search of the next one.

I don’t know how the book is, I bought it for my father. I don’t think he’s started it yet.