A lesson learned from Y2K: HOW THE 2000s BECAME EVERTHING, by Colette Shade
Success means nothing if it’s not built to last. It was a bit of a surreal and fascinating experience reading Colette Shade’s wonderful new book Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything , as it was the first book that attempts to tell a history of the decade when I became an adult (time never stops marching on and will eventually consume us all). Shade tells the story of the famous “Aughts” through a deeply personal lens, combining her own experiences living through that decade with a deeper analysis of the trends of American culture, many of which were shaped by larger global changes that ordinary Americans were completely unaware of. Shade’s book seems partly inspired by the wave of 2000’s nostalgia that has arrived on cue in this decade, which she compellingly argues is not so much nostalgia for “things were so much better back then!” (I was the...