In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Islands in Time, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Decade
• Bruce J. Schulman (bio)

A bobbed-haired flapper dances across the ballroom floor, cigarette dangling scandalously from her lips; a family of gaunt, hollow-eyed Okies pilot a beatup sedan, their tattered belongings tied to the roof; a long-haired, tie-dyed flock vibrate on the San Francisco panhandle as the Grateful Dead play in the background; angry motorists wait in line for rationed gasoline. For students of modern U.S. History, these images immediately conjure distinctive decades of the twentieth century. The almost-automatic association of those scenes with the Twenties, Thirties, Sixties, and Seventies signals the influence of the decade in the popular historical imagination. For nearly a century now, Americans have reckoned their history in ten-year-long blocks, constructing islands in time, each with its own distinctive atmosphere, its signature cultural artifacts, its peculiar meaning.

While many have made their peace with this trend, professional historians have mainly bristled at the baleful influence of such arbitrary markers. In his 2017 cri di coeur for the journal Modern American History, Christopher Capozzola named as the field's most urgent task the "revolt against the tyrannical oppression of the decade, easily the least helpful concept in the toolkit of modern American historians."¹ Much as Marc Bloch derided the "insidious" tendency to demarcate European history as a pendulum-swinging progression of centuries, historians have assailed chroniclers of the twentieth century United States for setting aside "experience-oriented chronological markers"—wars, epidemics, depressions, revolutions and the other real stuff of history—in favor of the decimal system.² "We merrily tick off decades," Warren Susman complained, "give them tricky names, and assume that that is what history is all about."³

Worse still, the tyranny of the decade distorts the historical record. It stresses evanescent, short-term trends, exaggerates change, and, in Susman's indictment, leaves "no room in American scholarship for Fernand Braudel's vision of extended time."⁴ Such unhealthy attachment to years that end with zero, what Bloch famously labeled "these faces in arithmetical masks," not [End Page 322] only compresses the scale of American historical development, emphasizing transient fads and presidential elections over long-term demographic patterns and durable policy regimes, it also privileges particular brands of history and relies on a vague conception of mass culture: a set of collective public experiences, widely shared through and structured by mass media and mass consumption.⁵ And while a few recent studies have investigated decades as transnational phenomena, the prevalent association of decades with the detritus of American popular culture also obscures the global dimensions of many seemingly peculiar domestic developments.⁶

"Decade-ism" has occasioned so much scorn that even Saturday Night Live satirized it. In a December 1979 episode, "Weekend Update's Social Sciences Editor" Al Franken bade good riddance to the solipsistic "Me Decade" and predicted the arrival of the "Al Franken Decade." "Why that?" the comedian asked. "Well, because I thought of it, and I'm on TV, so I've already gotten the jump on you. So, I say let's leave behind the fragmented, selfish '70s, and go into the '80s with a unity and purpose." You can almost see scholarly critics of the decade smiling in agreement at the absurdity of the practice.⁷

The decade, then, offers critics an easy target. Still, Susman and Capozzola's jabs hardly constitute knockout blows. A peculiarly modern, pre-eminently American invention, the decade remains standing, especially for scholars of twentieth-century U.S. History. It has spawned and continues to nurture a distinctive genre of historical analysis—the decade book—and its holistic approach offers useful correctives to the balkanization of historical subfields. Dismissing the decade as artificial and distorting ignores the concept's peculiar history and the genre's distinctive contributions.

Inventing the Decade: Frederick Lewis Allen and the 1920s

In 1931, Frederick Lewis Allen, a true scion of the American Establishment, concocted the decade book. Allen, then Associate Editor of Harper's Magazine, not only created an enduring genre of American historical literature, he pretty much invented the decade as contemporaries now imagine and use...

中文翻译：

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时间中的岛屿，或者我如何学会停止担心和热爱十年

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 时间中的岛屿，或者我如何学会停止担心和热爱十年
• 布鲁斯 J.舒尔曼（生物）

一头短发飘舞在舞厅的地板上翩翩起舞，香烟从她的嘴唇上晃来晃去，令人不快；一个瘦弱的、眼睛空洞的 Okies 一家驾驶着一辆破旧的轿车，他们的破烂财物被绑在车顶上；一头扎染的长毛羊群在旧金山的狭长地带振动，背景音乐是​​ Grateful Dead 游戏；愤怒的驾车者排队等候配给汽油。对于现代美国历史的学生来说，这些图像立即让人联想到二十世纪的独特几十年。这些场景几乎自动与 20 年代、30 年代、60 年代和 70 年代联系起来，标志着这十年在大众历史想象中的影响。近一个世纪以来，美国人用十年的时间来计算他们的历史，及时建造岛屿，每个岛屿都有自己独特的氛围，标志性的文物，

虽然许多人已经接受了这种趋势，但专业历史学家主要对这种任意标记的有害影响感到愤怒。在他2017年CRI双心的杂志现代美国历史，克里斯托弗Capozzola评为该领域的最紧迫的任务“对十年的豪强压迫的反抗，很容易地在现代美国历史学家的工具箱中至少有帮助的概念。” ¹就像马克·布洛赫嘲笑将欧洲历史划分为几个世纪钟摆式进程的“阴险”倾向一样，历史学家也抨击了 20 世纪美国的编年史家将“以经验为导向的时间标记”——战争、流行病、萧条、革命和其他真实的历史资料——支持十进制系统。² “我们欢快地勾勒了几十年，”沃伦·苏斯曼抱怨道，“给他们取一些棘手的名字，并假设这就是历史的全部意义。” ³

更糟糕的是，十年的暴政扭曲了历史记录。它强调瞬息万变的短期趋势，夸大变化，并且在苏斯曼的起诉书中，“美国学术界没有为费尔南·布罗代尔的延长时间愿景留下空间”。⁴对以零结尾的年份的这种不健康的依恋，布洛赫著名的标签“这些戴着算术面具的面孔”，而不是[End Page 322]只会压缩美国历史发展的规模，强调短暂的时尚和总统选举而不是长期的人口模式和持久的政策制度，它也赋予特定的历史品牌特权，并依赖于大众文化的模糊概念：一组集体公共经验，通过大众媒体和大众消费广泛共享和构建。虽然最近的一些研究将几十年作为跨国现象进行了调查，但几十年与美国流行文化的普遍联系也掩盖了许多看似奇特的国内发展的全球层面。⁶

“十年主义”引起了如此多的蔑视，甚至周六夜现场也讽刺它。在 1979 年 12 月的一集中，“周末更新”的社会科学编辑艾尔弗兰肯告别了唯我主义的“我的十年”，并预言了“艾尔弗兰肯十年”的到来。“为什么？” 喜剧演员问道。“嗯，因为我想到了，我在电视上，所以我已经得到了你的支持。所以，我说让我们抛开碎片化、自私的70年代，团结起来进入80年代和目的。” 你几乎可以看到这十年的学术评论家对这种做法的荒谬微笑表示赞同。⁷

那么，这十年为批评家提供了一个简单的目标。尽管如此，苏斯曼和卡波佐拉的刺拳几乎没有构成淘汰赛。作为一项特别现代的、卓越的美国发明，这十年依然屹立不倒，尤其是对于 20 世纪美国历史的学者而言。它已经催生并继续培育出一种独特的历史分析类型——十年书——其整体方法为历史子领域的分裂提供了有益的纠正。将十年视为人为和歪曲，忽略了该概念的特殊历史和该类型的独特贡献。

发明十年：弗雷德里克·刘易斯·艾伦和 1920 年代

1931 年，美国当权派真正的后裔弗雷德里克·刘易斯·艾伦 (Frederick Lewis Allen) 炮制了十年书。艾伦，然后是哈珀杂志的副主编，不仅创造了一种经久不衰的美国历史文学流派，而且他几乎发明了同时代人现在想象和使用的十年……