Just a few mostly "I Was There" notes, you're headed in the right directions:

"Energy" was a prime issue in the '70s: the '68-71 ending of the gold window (BTW, prior to that it was illegal for US citizens to own gold) plus the Yom-Kipper War resulted mess up crude oil prices and supplies, and Nixon oversaw a fundamental change in regulatory policy that made everything in this and many other areas a lot more expensive (I highly recommend this book ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307453693/ which is where I learned about LBJ's closing of the gold window, and which actually doesn't feature much of Reagan until I presume the end, I'm still in the Nixon period).

And rather critically Nixon's wage and price controls were never lifted for oil and gas, and by the Carter Administration bureaucrats were determining where every gallon of refined oil went. My father actually set up a tank farm of 55 gallon drums, but that turned out to be needless because among other things the bureaucrats made damned sure farming regions were not lacking.

The "Energy Crisis" ended practically overnight when Reagan deregulated oil (gas might have come later). This was mightily helped by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Saudis at least signed on to the campaign to bankrupt the Soviet Union by keeping oil prices down.

By the end of the "'70s" inflation was as I recall flirting with 15% per year, and Volker's necessary high interest rate solution brought the prime rate above 20%, and the government had to borrow at ~20% when Reagan came into office, which explains some of what was going on then.

On the other hand, Reagan, the Senate Republicans, and Tip O'Neal, sort of a transitional figure between the older more responsible liberals and the current type, pretty much never seriously cut budgets, instead all the screaming was about decreases from an automatically increasing baseline. Some of those were of course cuts after inflation, but not by much, as usual, "domestic spending" was the price the Democrats/Left demanded for the Right (which at least here used to include a lot of Democrats) to be able to fight the Cold War.

Which of course Reagan won, not that very many people at all believed he would, or could fix our economy. The mood really was grim back then (there was also all that Malthusian "Limits to Grow" (apparently rified by the energy situation), Soylent Green, we're killing the environment and bringing on a new Ice Age, nonsense back then), the first iteration of today's "preppers" were the survivalists back then, I was one (starting from 2nd grade in 1968 when my mother became a Civil Defense Block Mother, back before it was decided "Crisis Relocation" was cheaper on paper and CD -> FEMA).

The government influence of tax rate cuts was profound. I went to college far away from my family in 1979, and at a distance watched my parents substantially shift their economic activity. One extreme of the "'70s" was their taking out a $50K note to computerize a bunch of doctor's offices, and only being able to keep it current, not paying it down, while interest rates were so high.

And everything was done with taxation as a primary issue. As/after the Reagan tax rate cuts were phased in, that became a much smaller issue, and their ventures became much more economically productive.

That today we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world is significant.

Anyway, have fun, and after this thread winds down feel free to email me (it's in my Hacker News contact info) if you have any more questions, desire for book recommendations, etc.