short-story collection. Books about King’s writing
began to appear in the mid-1980’s, and the genre
of King criticism would burgeon in the next de-
cade. King’s own study of the horror genre,Danse
Macabre, appeared in 1980. Many film adaptations of
King’s movies premiered during the decade, includ-
ing Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining(1980), which ap-
pealed to film fans more than to King fans.
Impact King is best known by his fans for disturb-
ing situations, concepts, and events that stay with
readers after the book is finished. Some read his nov-
els for these simple, visceral reactions, but others see
in King’s work a chronicle and an exploration of the
anxieties and terrors distinctive of his time and
place. King’s novels continued to resonate with Amer-
ican culture in the 1980’s, and they therefore form a
key to understanding that in later years. He captured
the surface details and brand names of daily life, as
well as themes such as Americans’ love/hate rela-
tionships with cars, dieting, television shows, and
even popular novelists.
Further Reading
King, Stephen.On Writing. New York: Scribner, 2000.
Magistrale, Tony.Stephen King: The Second Decade.
New York: Twayne, 1992.
Bernadette Lynn Bosky
See also Book publishing; Film in the United
States; Horror films; Literature in the United States.
Kirkpatrick, Jeane
Identification American stateswoman and
academic
Born November 19, 1926; Duncan, Oklahoma
Died December 7, 2006; Bethesda, Maryland
Kirkpatrick served as the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, where she was a rigorous advocate for American
policies on disarmament, the Falkland Islands War, the So-
viet incursion in Afghanistan, the developing Solidarity
movement in Poland, and the continuing crises in the Mid-
dle East. Kirkpatrick was respected by friends and foes alike
and feared by some because of her intelligence, quick wit,
and passionate commitment to the United States’ renewed
anticommunist policies.
Jeane Kirkpatrick flirted with socialism during the
1940’s, but she later became an anticommunist. She
joined the Democratic Party and became a foreign
policy adviser to Hubert Humphrey during the 1968
presidential campaign. She drifted away from the
Democrats, however, because of the foreign policy
of President Jimmy Carter, which she viewed as not
adequately anticommunist. During the 1980 presi-
dential campaign, Kirkpatrick became a foreign pol-
icy adviser to the Republican candidate, Ronald Rea-
gan. After his victory, Reagan appointed her to serve
as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Kirk-
patrick was the first American woman to serve in that
capacity.
Kirkpatrick maintained that communism was the
primary enemy of the United States and its culture
of freedom, individualism, and free trade. Her anti-
communist focus led Kirkpatrick to lend Ameri-
can support to like-minded authoritarian regimes in
Latin America and Asia. At the Republican National
Convention in 1984, Kirkpatrick lambasted the Dem-
ocratic Party and its candidate for president, Walter
Mondale, for their naïveté about Soviet foreign pol-
icy and their failure to appreciate the values of free-
dom and individual rights that were the hallmarks of
American culture.
After Reagan’s second inauguration on Janu-
ary 21, 1985, Kirkpatrick resigned as U.S. ambassa-
dor to the United Nations. She joined the Republi-
can Party and returned to Georgetown University to
teach and write; she argued repeatedly that the
Democratic Party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Ken-
nedy had been taken over by a group of left-wing
appeasers who jeopardized American interests by
following a policy of accommodation with the Sovi-
ets. In later years, Kirkpatrick remained a forceful
voice for procapitalist policies and conservatism in
politics.Impact As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
Kirkpatrick served as the voice of the Reagan admin-
istration on the world stage. She supported Reagan’s
policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union dur-
ing the Cold War, and she was at the center of the
American response to the Arab-Israeli struggle, the
rapid turnover in Soviet leadership, and the turmoil
in Latin America.Further Reading
Gerson, Alan.The Kirkpatrick Mission—Diplomacy
Without Apology: America at the United Nations.New
York: Free Press, 1991.564 Kirkpatrick, Jeane The Eighties in America