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The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, form the single largest demographic spike in American history. Never before or since have birth rates shot up and remained so high so long, with some obvious results: when the Boomers were kids, American culture revolved around families and schools; when they were teenagers, the United States was wracked by rebelliousness; now, as mature adults, the Boomers have led America to become the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world.
Boomer Nation will for the first time offer an incisive look into this generation that has redefined America's culture in so many ways, from women's rights and civil rights to religion and politics. Steve Gillon combines firsthand reporting of the lives of six Boomers and their families with a broad look at postwar American history in a fascinating mix of biography and history. His characters, like America itself, reflect a variety of heritages: rich and poor, black and white, immigrant and native born. Their lives take very different paths, yet are shaped by key events and trends in similar ways. They put a human face on the Boomer generation, showing what it means to grow up amid widespread prosperity, with an explosion of democratic autonomy that led to great upheavals but also a renewal from below of our churches, industries, and even the armed forces.
The same generation dismissed as pampered and selfish has led a revival of religion in America; the same generation that unleashed the women's movement has also shifted our politics into its most market-oriented, anti-governmental era since Woodrow Wilson. Gillon draws many lessons from this "generational history" -- above all, that the Boomers have transformed America from the security- and authority-seeking culture of their parents to the autonomy- and freedom-rich world of today.
When the "greatest generation" was young and not yet at war, it was widely derided as selfish and spoiled. Only in hindsight, long after the sacrifices of World War II, did it gain its sterling reputation. Today, as Boomer America rises to the challenges of the war on terror, we may be on the cusp of a reevaluation of the generation of Presidents Bush and Clinton. That generation has helped make America the richest, strongest nation on the planet, and as Gillon's book proves, it has had more influence on the rest of us than any other group.
Boomer Nation is an eye-opening reinterpretation of the past six decades.
- Sales Rank: #1679874 in Books
- Published on: 2004-05-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.44" h x 1.14" w x 6.38" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The historian/host of the History Channel's History Center, Gillion chronicles post-WWII America through the lives of six boomers who represent different strands of baby boom cultureâ€"which Gillon asserts has become synonymous with American culture. Four of his subjects have achieved national prominence: Bobby Muller, who founded Vietnam Veterans of America; lawyer and cancer survivor Fran Visco, who became president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition; Marshall Herskovitz, developer of the seminal television series Thirtysomething; and architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who created the avant-garde Florida community of Seaside. Together with Donny Deutsch, a self-made advertising mogul, and Alberta Wilson, who overcame substance abuse and poverty to become a Christian educator, they provide the focus for a look at the Vietnam War, the women's movement and the attraction of some boomers to fundamentalist religion. What Gillon uniquely accomplishes is to illuminate how pervasive boomer influence continues to be in the 21st century. He touches on iconic events and influencesâ€"Catch-22, Woodstock, the Cold War, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther Kingâ€"but he is refreshingly unnostalgic about them. Gillon makes especially interesting points when exploring the continuity from the boomers to Gen X (born between 1965 and 1976) and Gen Y (1977â€"1995). His assessment of the boomer is generally favorableâ€"boomers did not abandon their core values of self-reliance, entitlement and idealism, but have applied those values to the changing challenges they have faced. The result, he says, is that "we are all boomers now."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
"The Baby Boom would prove to be the single greatest demographic event in American history--more significant, even, than the staggering loss of life during the Civil War," insists this academic and television host, who focuses on those born between 1947 and 1957 rather than 1946 and 1964. He contends that there is a common thread running through this generation that constitutes 29 percent of the population, but at the same time he recognizes the great differences in backgrounds, unique personal crises, conservatives, liberals, political independents, churchgoers, and others. They are today's decision makers in boardrooms and government. To tell the story of this generation, the author profiles six individuals whose experiences reflect the broad themes of the age: television, advertising, religion, architecture, feminism, and the Vietnam War. Harsh reality has had a profound effect on this generation, being raised on expectations of the good life and "having it all." This tale of the boomers who reshaped America is fascinating. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Steve Gillon has taught at both Yale University and Oxford University and is currently a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. He is also the Resident Historian of the History Channel, where he hosts a Sunday morning show, HistoryCenter, and appears in numerous specials, including "History vs. Hollywood." He is the author of many books and articles about modern American history.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Engaging and rigorous
By Matthew Gleick
Although there's little debate that baby boomers transformed America in important ways, there are surprisingly few books that try to analyze in meaningful ways what the boomers actually did and what it means, in the first place, to talk about the Baby Boom as a distinct generation. Gillon rectifies that with this book, which uses the stories of six different boomers of dramatically different social and cultural backgrounds to illuminate the experience of a generation.
Needless to say, the people we now call boomers were hardly all alike, and there were all sorts of ties -- ethnic, religious, professional -- that connected them more closely to people in other generations than to people in their own. But Gillon convincingly shows how the demographic realities of the boom shaped the lives of nearly everyone in it, and had a deep-seated cultural impact that was hard to escape. This is a sharp work of history, rigorous in the way it approaches problems but thoroughly entertaining in in its storytelling.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Eye Candy
By D. Giesen
Boomer Nation is interesting. It is a compelling read only because it is extremely well written and takes a group of lives and walks them through the late 1940s to 2000. The book's strength is a journalistic technique called "personification," where a writer takes dull statistics and uses anecdotal information to illustrate hard numbers.
That's a wonderful idea, if you have the data to back up why you chose who you chose for the anecdotes. Author Gillon was incredibly shallow in presenting hard data to back up why he selected to profile the people he did. Only one couple, two architects whose urban concepts featured "Back to the Future Design," was apparent for why they were there.
The book takes a diverse array of, primarily, easterners and uses biographical sketches to illustrate everything from Vatican II to the women's movement to the lost decade of the 1970s, when America seemed to ignore the fact it had a drug, booze and vision problem.
Why these people were choosen was never clear. They just, frankly, appear. While they represent different themes of the last 50 years, most are extremes. What's lost in the discussion is why there people are better examples of their generation than, say, Bill Clinton, or, for that matter, me!
In summary, the book is well written but poor documentation makes a potentially good book at best mediocre.
17 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Reads good, but doesn't describe the people I know.
By Lynn H. Carrier
Gillon writes with an exciting and entertainly style. I enjoyed reading it, as much as I enjoy someone like Neil Gaiman. Neil writes good fiction and he entertains me. Gillon writes entertaining non-fiction, but it's not representative of most of us.
For someone, like myself, from the boomer generation, the people he selected as examples could not have been more different than me or any of the people my age. One fellow sold a business for $270 million. A woman obtained her PhD. Another woman spearheaded a successful campaign for breast cancer. Another fellow has several successful TV shows. I don't know people like that. I don't drink beer with them. They have success in their lives that only 1 in 10,000 people find, maybe more. They are celebrities.
I couldn't relate to real life people he talked about. Sorry, but I couldn't connect the changes in America with what these 4 people did with their lives either.
The people I know, work, pay their bills, worry about raising their children, and how they will get along after they retire. During the last 30 years, the people Gillon didn't talk about, struggled to get a good education, get a good job, keep the job, and hold their marriage together. They are in debt up to their eyeballs. Gillon's characters were building billion dollar businesses, getting PhD's, meeting the President, or having their TV shows on a national network.
Good for them, I am happy for them, but no one I know has any experience living a charmed life these people have.
I hope Gillon makes lots of money and becomes famous, because that is what he admires.
I hope my family loves me, I set a good example in my neighbor hood, and I can help someone along their way.
Different strokes for different folks, as they say.
See all 5 customer reviews...
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