"Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right," by Dominic Sandbrook (Knopf Doubleday, 528 pp.) Did the 1970s – admittedly a grim era in US history in many respects – create a backlash that explains the anger of some of today’s Christian right? That’s the view British historian Dominic Sandbrook persuasively argues in this look at cultural and social history. (February)