A Decade in Review: Cultural Markers, Keywords, and Other (Totally Subjective) Noteworthy Things

It’s not been a great decade in terms of events. My candidates for subtitles for this post: “The Troublesome Teens,” “A Decade of Decline,” “The Empire’s Fall.” None of these are subtle in direction.

I originally conceived of this as a “Decade of Ideas” post. I had planned to flesh out what seemed to be the biggest ideas from 2010 to 2019. That proved too tall a task at this point. While I’m not unobservant, I lack the necessary perspective to make many bold declarations about which ideas mattered most from the past decade. Even so, the work that went into this turned up some noteworthy terms and keywords that might in the future, I believe, serve as idea markers for the 2010-2019 period—e.g. austerity, socialism, -ism, feminism, etc. I’ll let you be the judge.

Other questions I hoped to begin to answer: Who were the decade’s most important intellectuals? What were its most important books, groups, institutions, films, happenings, and events?

Although I didn’t succeed on these fronts, what follows can be the start of a list of things that, looking back, might matter to future historians.

A few preliminary notes:

1. Apologies if there are too many Chicago and Illinois-specific events. It’s a hazard of the author’s location and dispositions.
2. All noteworthy books are a mix of fiction and nonfiction, with insertions of history books (generally) when I remembered/found them.
3. All noteworthy deaths are subjective—a mix of intellectuals, pop culture figures, musicians, etc.
4. Month-by-month events selected are what I think resonated outward in terms of impact.

2010

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Austerity (and “filter bubble” first used in print)

– Noteworthy Books: Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot) The Big Short (Lewis), The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson), Washington: A Life (Chernow), Colonel Roosevelt (Morris), Emperor of All Maladies (Mukherjee).

– Noteworthy films: The Social Network, The Hurt Locker, Winter’s Bone, Black Swan, 127 Hours, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Inception, Somewhere

– Noteworthy Deaths: Mary Daly, J.D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, Charlie Wilson, Alexander Haig, Zelda Rubinstein, Martin Gardner, Dennis Hopper, Robert Byrd, George Steinbrenner, Tony Judt, Richard Holbrooke

Events:

• April, Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform explodes in Gulf of Mexico
• May, Greece “bailout” and austerity
• May (6^th), “Flash Crash” stock market crash caused by automated trading (spooking algorithms)
• June, Jon Burge, formerly of Chicago Police Department, found guilty of police misconduct – sent to prison on 2011 of perjury and obstruction of justice
• October, Instagram launches
• October, Germany makes final reparation payment for WWI
• December, Arab Spring begins in Tunisia (last until December 2012), spreading to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain

2011

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Pragmatic (and “blockchain” first used in print)

– Noteworthy Books: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Marable), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), Arguably (Hitchens), Hemingway’s Boat (Hendrickson), Bossypants (Fey), A World on Fire (Foreman), Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx (Gabriel), Believing is Seeing (Morris), Fifty Shades of Grey (James)

– Noteworthy films: Drive, The Descendants, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Margin Call, The Tree of Life, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Help, Tabloid, Margaret, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Bridesmaids

– Noteworthy Deaths: Sargent Shriver, Warren Christopher, Elizabeth Taylor, Geraldine Ferraro, Gil Scott-Heron, Jack Kevorkian, Betty Ford, Robert Ettinger, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Joe Frazier, Christopher Hitchens, Václav Havel

– Events:

• March, Death penalty suspended in Illinois
• May, Osama bin Laden killed
• May, Joplin (MO) Tornado (kills 158, injures 1150)
• May, Rahm Emanuel elected mayor of Chicago
• May, Oprah Winfrey taped final show
• June, Rod Blagojevich found guilty of corruption, sent to prison in 2012 after appeals decided (14 years)
• June, Same-sex civil unions allowed in Illinois
• July, Oslo bombing/killing (77 killed)
• September, Occupy Wall Street began
• December, U.S. formally declares end of Iraq War

2012

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Socialism (and “hot take” first used in print)

– Noteworthy Books: The Barbarous Years (Bailyn), The Second World War (Beevor), The Outsourced Self (Hochschild), Wild (Strayed)  Gone Girl (Flynn), This Is How You Lose Her (Diaz)

– Noteworthy films: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, The Master, Django Unchained, Moonrise Kingdom, Life of Pi, Argo, Beasts of Southern Wild, Holy Motors, Moonrise Kingdom, This Is Not a Film, The Avengers

– Noteworthy Deaths: Joe Paterno, Trayvon Martin, Andrew Breitbart, Adrienne Rich, Earl Scruggs, Mike Wallace, Dick Clark, Chuck Colson, Adam Yauch, Maurice Sendak, Carlos Fuentes, Andrew Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Rodney King, Nora Ephron, Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine, Stephen Covey, Sally Ride, Gore Vidal, Neil Armstrong, Eric Hobsbawm, George McGovern, Norman Schwarzkopf

– Events:

• February, Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II
• February, Trayvon Martin murder
• March, Encyclopædia Britannica discontinues print edition
• July, Aurora, CO, movie theater shooting (killed 12)
• September, Chicago Teachers Union strike (8 days)
• November, Obama defeats Mitt Romney
• December, Sandy Hook Elementary, CT, school shooting (killed 26, 20 were children)

2013

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Science (and “bingeable” first used in print)

– Noteworthy Books: I Am Malala (), Dirty Wars (Scahill), Miss Anne in Harlem (Kaplan), Going Clear (Wright), Mortal Sins (D’Antonio), The Riot Grrrl Collection (Darms), The Sports Gene (Epstein), Johnny Cash: The Life (Hilburn), A Dreadful Deceit (Jones), The Unwinding (Packer), Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (Sperber),

– Noteworthy films: 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street, Gravity, Before Midnight, American Hustle, Her, Captain Phillips, Nebraska, Blue Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, Frozen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Inside Llewyn Davis

– Noteworthy Deaths: James Buchanan (economist), Ed Koch, Ronald Dworkin, Hugo Chavez, Chinua Achebe, Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher, George Jones, Ray Harryhausen, Robert Fogel, James Gandolfini, Helen Thomas, Elmore Leonard, David Frost, Lou Reed, Doris Lessing, Nelson Mandela, Peter Geach

– Events:

• February, Pope Benedict XVI resigns
• February, Jesse Jackson, Jr., found guilty of wire and mail fraud, sentenced to prison (2.5 years)
• March, Pope Francis elected
• May, First production of embryonic stem cells by cloning
• May, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools – most ever at one time in the U.S.
• June, U.S. v. Windsor, Defense of Marriage Act overturned, allowing for federal same-sex marriage
• July, Zimmerman acquitted for murder of Trayvon Martin, #BlackLivesMatter formed
• November, Illinois becomes 16^th state to allow gay-lesbian marriage
• November, Iran Nuclear Deal made

2014

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Culture (and “manspreading” first used in print)

– Noteworthy Books: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (Davis), Invisible Bridge (Perlstein), Bad Feminist (Gay), The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Kondo), Just Mercy (), On Immunity (Biss), Thirteen Days in September (Wright), Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (Pollitt), A Fighting Chance (Warren),

– Noteworthy films: Selma, Boyhood, Grand Budapest Hotel, Interstellar, Birdman, Foxcatcher, Gone Girl, Whiplash, Unbroken, Under the Skin, Citizenfour, Love Is Strange, Mommy, John Wick, Phoenix, American Sniper

– Noteworthy Deaths: Amiri Baraka, Pete Seeger, Ana Gordy Gaye, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joan Mondale, Robert A. Dahl, Stuart Hall, Harold Ramis, Fred Phelps, Ernesto Laclau, Gary Becker, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Michael Brown Jr., Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, Marion Barry

– Events:

• April, Flint Water Crisis begins
• April, Canonization of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II
• August, Michael Brown shot in Ferguson, MO, protests ensue
• September, “David Bowie Is” premiers at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (runs through 2015, 194,000 visitors)
• November, Bruce Rauner wins Illinois governorship from Gov. Pat Quinn
• November, One World Trade Center opens in NYC
• December, U.S.-Cuba trade relations normalized

2015

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: -ism

– Noteworthy Books: Between the World and Me (Coates), The Invention of Nature (Wulf), The Story of the Lost Child (Ferrante), Black Earth (Snyder), The Argonauts (Nelson), Fracture (Blom), Kissinger’s Shadow (Grandin), The Givenness of Things (Robinson), One of Us (Seierstad), My Life on the Road (Steinem)

– Noteworthy films: Straight Outta Compton, Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Tangerine, The Martian, Brooklyn, Steve Jobs, Spotlight, The End of the Tour, Ex Machina

– Noteworthy Deaths: Mario Cuomo, Ernie Banks, Dean Smith, Leonard Nimoy, Günter Grass, Cardinal Francis George, Peter Gay, B.B. King, Christopher Lee, E.L. Doctorow, Wes Craven, Oliver Sacks, Jackie Collins, Yogi Berra, Maureen O’Hara, René Girard, Benedict Anderson, Natalie Cole

– Events:

• February: “Hamilton” debuts in NYC’s Public Theatre
• March, Rahm Emanuel survives mayoral election challenge from Jesus “Chuy” Garcia
• April, Chicago Public Schools Chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett forced out after admission of steering contracts to former employer in exchange for revenue cut (October, pleaded guilty)
• July, U.S.-Cuba resume full diplomatic relations
• May, Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicted on bank fraud for paying $3.5 million in hush money to cover past misconduct. October plea agreement. Sentenced to prison in 2016 (15 months)
• September, Volkswagen found guilty of rigging emissions tests
• November, Dashcam footage of Laquan McDonald’s shooting (in October 2014) released to public
• December, San Bernardino shooting (14 killed, ISIL claimed responsibility)

2016

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Surreal

– Noteworthy Books: The Underground Railroad (Whitehead), Barkskins (Proulx), Blood in the Water (Thompson), The Cosmopolitans (Schulman), Evicted (Desmond), Blood at the Root (Phillips), Born to Run (Springsteen), The Feud (Beam), The Fire This Time (Ward, ed), Ghetto (Duneier), Hidden Figures (Shetterly), White Trash (Isenberg)

– Noteworthy Films: Moonlight, I Am Not Your Negro, Rogue One, La La Land, Deadpool, Manchester by the Sea, The Meddler, Fire at Sea, American Honey, Jackie, The Lobster, The Edge of Seventeen, 13th

– Noteworthy Deaths: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Antonin Scalia, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Umberto Eco, Harper Lee, Nancy Reagan, Hilary Putnam, Merle Haggard, Doris Roberts, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Alvin Toffler, Elie Wiesel, Tim LaHaye, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, Phyllis Schlafly, Leonard Cohen, Janet Reno, Fidel Castro, John Glenn, Carrie Fisher

– Events:

• January, WHO announces Zika virus
• February-May, Van Gogh exhibit opens at Art Institute (433,632 attended)
• March, President Barack Obama visits Cuba
• June, Brexit referendum vote
• June, Orlando-Pulse Nightclub shooting (49 killed, 53 wounded)
• September, Chicago called a “war-torn country” in a nationally televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
• October, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” opened in Chicago
• October 7: (1) U.S. intelligence accuse Russian government of hacking to interfere with U.S. presidential election; (2) Washington Post releases Access Hollywood videotape showing Trump bragging about sexual improprieties; (3) WikiLeaks releases private emails from Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
• November 2, Cubs win World Series (after 108 year drought)
• Nov. 8, Donald Trump elected U.S. President
• December, U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan

2017

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Feminism

– Noteworthy Books: The Color of Law (Rothstein), Fear City (Phillips-Fein), Democracy in Chains (MacLean), The Exile (Scott-Clark/Levy), Greater Gotham (Wallace), Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Walls), Hunger (Gay), Locking Up Our Own (Forman), No Is Not Enough (Klein), October (Miéville), The Vaccine Race (Wadman), The Apparitionists (Manseau), The Hate U Give (Thomas)

– Noteworthy Films: Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, Detroit, The Shape of Water, A Ghost Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Lost City of Z

– Noteworthy Deaths: Nat Hentoff, Zygmunt Bauman, Mary Tyler Moore, Tom Regan, Derek Walcott, Chuck Berry, Robert Pirsig, Adam West, Jerry Lewis, Kate Millett, Hugh Hefner, Tom Petty, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, Sue Grafton

– Events:

• January, U.S. Dept. of Justice, run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, releases scathing report on Chicago Police Department on problems of excessive force,” sweeping changes called for
• January, Trump sworn in as president
• May, WannaCry ransomware attack
• May, Robert Mueller sworn in as DOJ special counsel on Russian election interference
• June-September, Takashi Murakami exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Art (205,000 visitors)
• June, U.S. announces withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement
• June, Grenfell Tower fire in London (kills 72)
• June, Otto Warmbier returned to U.S. from North Korea, dies a few weeks later
• July, IL House overrides Gov. Rauner veto to pass budget package after two years of a fiscal stalemate
• August, Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA
• August, Great American Eclipse (8/21)
• August, Hurricane Harvey hits Houston
• September, Hurricane Irma (Gulf and Caribbean, Puerto Rico)
• October, Las Vegas shooting (58 killed, 851 injured)
• October, U.S. withdraws from UNESCO
• October, NYT “Harvey Weinstein” expose published. Helped launch #MeToo movement.
• October, NYC truck attack (kills 8, injures 11)
• November, Sutherland Springs (TX) Church shooting (kills 26, injures 20)
• December, U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

2018

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: Justice

– Noteworthy Books: Bad Blood (Carreyrou), The Fifth Risk (Lewis), Heartland (Smarsh),  Educated: A Memoir (Westover), Heavy (Layman), Reagan: An American Journey (Spitz), The Shape of Ruins (Vasquez), She Has Her Mother’s Laugh (Zimmer), Insurrecto (Apostol), Paul Simon: The Life (Hilburn), Rising (Rush), Reporter (Hersh), Tailspin (Brill)

– Noteworthy Films: Black Panther, First Reformed, Roma, BlacKKKlansman, A Star is Born, First Man, Eighth Grade, Green Book, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Minding the Gap

– Noteworthy Deaths: Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert McCormick Adams Jr., Mort Walker, Hayden White, Alfred W. Crosby, Stephen Hawking, Barbara Bush, Randy Scruggs, Tom Wolfe, Richard Pipes, Philip Roth, Kate Spade, Stanley Cavell, Charles Krauthammer, V.S. Naipaul, Aretha Franklin, Robin Leach, Neil Simon, Jamal Khashoggi, Paul Allen, Stan Lee, George H.W. Bush, Penny Marshall, Wendy Beckett

– Events:

• January, U.S. Government shutdown over DACA
• February, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting (17 killed, 17 injured)
• March, National School Walkout
• March, March for Out Lives protest (900 cities participate, international)
• May, U.S./Trump announces intention to leave Iranian Nuclear Agreement
• May, Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry
• June, U.S.-North Korea Summit in Singapore
• June, U.S. withdraws from UN Human Right Council
• July, U.S. tariffs on China begin
• July, Facebook data leak scandal (shares drop 20 percent)
• August, U.S. sanctions resume on Iran
• September, National Museum of Brazil fire (90 percent of 20 million in archives destroyed)
• October, Jamal Khashoggi murdered
• October, Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to SCOTUS
• October, Jason Van Dyke found guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery (sentenced to 81 months in prison)
• November, J.B. Pritzer defeats Gov. Rauner
• November, Butte County CA Camp Fire (kills 88)
• December, France Yellow Vest Protests
• December, U.S. Government shutdown over Border Wall funding (lasts until Jan. 25, 2019)

2019

– Merriam Webster – Word of the Year: They

– Noteworthy Books: She Said (Kantor/Twohey), The Impeachers (Wineapple), How to Hide an Empire (Immerwahr), Audience of One (Poniewozik), Antisocial (Marantz), The British Are Coming (Atkinson), Good Talk (Jacob), The Man Who Saw Everything (Levy), The Nickel Boys (Whitehead), How to Be an Antriracist (Kendi), Solitary (Woodfox/George), Trust Exercise (Choi), Charged (Bazelon), The Club (Damrosch), The Code (O’Mara), Edison (Morris), The Contender (Mann), The Education of an Idealist (Power), Furious Hours (Cep), Gods of the Upper Air (King), Janis (George-Warren)

– Noteworthy Films: Parasite, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Irishman, Marriage Story, Little Women, 1917, Joker

– Noteworthy Deaths: Mary Oliver, Nathan Glazer, Erik Olin Wright, Patricia Nell Warren, Dick Dale, Barbara Hammer, Charles Van Doren, John Lukacs, Grumpy Cat, Herman Wouk, Gloria Vanderbilt, Ross Perot, John Paul Stevens, Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Epstein, David Koch, Immanuel Wallerstein, Harold Bloom, Gertrude Himmelfarb

– Events:

• February, Empire actor Jussie Smollett claimed to be victim of racist, homophobic attack in Chicago. Later disproved.
• March, Christchurch gun attack in New Zealand (51 killed, 50 injured)
• March, Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller Report published
• April, Julian Assange, Wikileaks cofounder, arrested after 7 years in Ecuador’s London Embassy
• April, redacted Mueller Report released to public
• April, Lori Lightfoot wins Mayor Office for Chicago
• May, Gulf of Oman tanker incident
• June, Marijuana legalized for Illinois (takes effect Jan. 2020).
• June, President Trump state visit to UK (Theresa May resigned prior month)
• July, Boris Johnson elected prime minister of UK
• August, NOAA reports July 2019 hottest month on record above 20^th-century averages.
• August, US withdraws from 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia
• August, Walmart El Paso (TX) shooting (22 dead, 24 injured)
• August, Dayton (OH) shooting (10 dead, 27 injured)
• August, Activists hold funeral for Okjökull glacier in Iceland
• September, International Climate Strike, speculated to be largest in world history (3 days before UN Climate Summit)
• September, Hurricane Dorian (Bahamas)
• September (24), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announces impeachment inquiry
• October, Chicago Teachers Union strike (15 days)
• October, First all-female spacewalk outside of International Space Station
• October, Killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced
• November, BioScience published a study, co-signed by 11,000 scientists, declaring “clearly and unequivocally” that Earth is facing a climate emergency
• November (13), Public impeachment hearings begin in House of Representatives
• December (5th), Articles of impeachment drafted by House
• December (10th), Formal impeachment charges filed
• December (18^th), House approves two impeachment articles, and President Trump is third president to be impeached in U.S. history
• December, U.S. Space Force founded

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References

“Best of” Lists, Publishers Weekly, 2010-2019.

Dargis, Manohla, and A.O. Scott, “The 10 Most Influential Films of the Decade (and 20 Other Favorites,” The New York Times, November 27, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/movies/best-movies-2010s-decade.html

“Decade in Review: End of the ’10s.” Chicago Sun-Times, December 30, 2019, sec. Decade in Review. https://chicago.suntimes.com/decade-in-review.

“Movie Lists,” 2010-2019. Rolling Stone.

“Ten Best Movies of…”, 2010-2019. Vanity Fair

“Time Traveler,” Merriam Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/2007. Accessed 12/31/2019.

Wikipedia Year lists, 2010-2019. Accessed 12/31/2019.

Wolfe, Elizabeth, and Brandon Griggs. “Here Are 10 of the Decade’s Most Influential Books.” CNN, December 30, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/entertainment/decades-most-influential-books-trnd/index.html.

Zacharek, Stephanie, “The 10 Best Movies of the 2010s,” TIME, November 13, 2019, https://time.com/5725149/best-movies-2010s-decade/