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Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today
 
 
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Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today [Hardcover]

Tom Brokaw (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)

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"The times they are a-changin'"
Read the prologue and introduction to Boom!, Tom Brokaw's reflections on the tumultuous 1960s [PDF].

Book Description

November 6, 2007
In The Greatest Generation, his landmark bestseller, Tom Brokaw eloquently evoked for America what it meant to come of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Now, in Boom!, one of America’s premier journalists gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America as he brings to life the tumultuous Sixties, a fault line in American history. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together as Brokaw takes us on a memorable journey through a remarkable time, exploring how individual lives and the national mindset were affected by a controversial era and showing how the aftershocks of the Sixties continue to resound in our lives today. In the reflections of a generation, Brokaw also discovers lessons that might guide us in the years ahead.

Boom! One minute it was Ike and the man in the grey flannel suit, and the next minute it was time to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” While Americans were walking on the moon, Americans were dying in Vietnam. Nothing was beyond question, and there were far fewer answers than before.

Published as the fortieth anniversary of 1968 approaches, Boom! gives us what Brokaw sees as a virtual reunion of some members of “the class of ’68,” offering wise and moving reflections and frank personal remembrances about people’s lives during a time of high ideals and profound social, political, and individual change. What were the gains, what were the losses? Who were the winners, who were the losers? As they look back decades later, what do members of the Sixties generation think really mattered in that tumultuous time, and what will have meaning going forward?

Race, war, politics, feminism, popular culture, and music are all explored here, and we learn from a wide range of people about their lives. Tom Brokaw explores how members of this generation have gone on to bring activism and a Sixties mindset into individual entrepreneurship today. We hear stories of how this formative decade has led to a recalibrated perspective–on business, the environment, politics, family, our national existence.

Remarkable in its insights, profoundly moving, wonderfully written and reported, this revealing portrait of a generation and of an era, and of the impact of the 1960s on our lives today, lets us be present at this reunion ourselves, and join in these frank conversations about America then, now, and tomorrow.

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Customers buy this book with The Time of Our Lives: A conversation about America; Who we are, where we've been, and where we need to go now, to recapture the American dream $16.80

Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today + The Time of Our Lives: A conversation about America; Who we are, where we've been, and where we need to go now, to recapture the American dream


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's less heroism in Brokaw's profiles of the baby boom cohort than there was in his salute to The Greatest Generation, but there's still plenty of drama. Almost everyone the author interviews (famous boomers like Arlo Guthrie, Hillary Clinton and Karl Rove along with many unsung contemporaries) describes a personal journey through the upheavals of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, women's liberation, the counterculture, the rise of the New Left or the birth of the New Right. Callow students became radicalized, restless housewives forged careers, musicians spiraled into addiction, disgusted erstwhile liberals trekked rightward, everyone—except Dick Cheney, Brokaw mentions—questioned authority. Unlike Brokaw's celebratory and elegiac previous book, this one is steeped in retrospective ambivalence; conservatives look back on the era with disdain, and even unreconstructed lefties feel misgivings about its excesses. As an NBC correspondent, Brokaw was a keen (if careful nonparticipant) observer of the '60s and contributes his own neutral but engaging gloss on developments, along with personal recollections of everyone from Bobby Kennedy to Hunter S. Thompson. He may not always know what to make of it all, but Brokaw's profiles do convey the decade's diverse experiences, its roiling energies and its centrality in the making of modern America. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Tom Brokaw is the author of four bestsellers: The Greatest Generation, The Greatest Generation Speaks, An Album of Memories, and A Long Way from Home. From 1976 to 1981 he anchored Today on NBC. He was the sole anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw from 1983 to 2004.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 688 pages
  • Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (November 6, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400064570
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400064571
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #391,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

102 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (102 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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100 of 120 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Totally, totally....., November 7, 2007
This review is from: Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today (Hardcover)
Right off let me say that if you missed the sixties, this book is still something you'll want to read. If, like myself, you came of age during that decade you will also find Boom more that worth the time to read.

Brokaw has a way of condensing the ideas he's trying to get the reader to engage. I found The Greatest Generation terribly revealing about my parent's generation. I suspect those born during the sixties and after will also find Boom's content interesting.

I was also impressed with the famous who agreed to be interviewed for this work. I have heard the following quip, "If you can remember the sixties you didn't experience it." Well, clearly for those Brokaw interviewed that isn't true.

Boom is logically organized and intelligently written. You can tell that Brokaw loves doing research and loves his subject.

The hogwash about how much money Brokaw has made and whether this effects his objectivity toward Cheney and others is a distraction. No one has ever challenged Brokaw's professionalism because he earns a lot of money. For some reason, being financially successful is a kiss of death in some individuals eyes.

Boom is a wonderful look at a time that truly is a defining era. There is America before the sixties and the America after the sixties and they aren't the same place. You'll want to read this one slowly and ponder what it says.

Peace from North Carolina
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I already had the book form of this and then bought the Kindle edition after participating in a live online chat with Brokaw, December 17, 2007
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I'm writing this in the wake of an online chat with Brokaw where he was kind enough to answer some of my questions as well as those of other participants there. It was one short hour which simply flew by!.

Although I had the book in "traditional" form already, I got the Kindle version as well so I could share it with others tomorrow, along with the chat itself (I'd name the site but I don't know if that is allowed here)

As I already knew -but Brokaw reiterated in the chat - the book was a type of "virtual reunion" of people who'd lived through the Sixties and were open to revealing their thoughts and changes forty years after those pivotal years.

The book is aptly titled Boom! because there were true shock waves as major changes rippled quickly - and sometimes tore- through our culture. Brokaw focused on major areas such as feminism and the women's movement,politics (including the Democratic identity crisis), Vietnam, race relations and racism, assassinations, etc.

The famous, infamous and anonymous are interviewed or lend their voices to this book, making it more accessible, not at all dry and very lively. Brokaw noted that he wished he could have covered such topics as the Evangelical movement and the changes in journalism so if you get this book, please be aware that HE is aware of what was not covered. I think that including more areas might have watered down the book so I think this was a wise choice.

I think he did a superb job, especially with the format, including firsthand accounts from those who'd been in Vietnam as well as notable names like Gloria Steinem, Judy Collins (her albums seemed to be everywher and her songs were a backdrop to my days), Kris Kristofferson, Jann Wenner (of Rolling Stone magazine), Dick Gregory and many, many others.

He doesn't forget the tragedies of that time, either, and quotes both Dylan and Lennon in his opening to the book. If you are looking at a definitive book on the Sixties, you'll find a stance here that isn't decided about the final impact of those years. Even forty years later, the author writes that it will take longer to see the Sixties with perspective. Again, I agree.

As a member of the 60s generation, I couldn't put this book down, especially as as I fully agreed with one point made by Brokaw- that the Sixties "blindsided" us with quick and startling changes, from the variety of drugs available eveywhere to women's lib.

It is hard for me to understand how others see this time, the ones who didn't live through it, but I felt this book did a super job of encompassing many of the key events and it certainly set off waves of memories in my brain. I suggest you pick up a copy of this, sit down and let this author take you back in time. I got a shock when I saw the words "forty years ago" in print. It truly seems like only yesterday!
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61 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars BUST!, December 3, 2007
This review is from: Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today (Hardcover)
I am sad to say that I was disappointed By Tom Brokaw's "Boom." It is a long, ponderous, 611 page trip down memory lane to a virtual reunion of men and women who came of age in the '60s, and who offer a mishmash of views regarding their lives and times, then and now.

Some of their stories and recollections ring more credibly than others, but there is too little analysis from these personal accounts, especially by Brokaw, who wonders continually about the meaning of the riddle of the 60's, but provides no personal conclusions despite his ringside seat to the events, and all that has happened since. I was clearly expecting more.

Here's an example of what I mean. For all their magnificent accomplishments, the so called "greatest generation," were also the parents of the baby boomers. How, in fewer than 20 years, did their collective sense of duty, honor and patriotism diminish so greatly into a National epidemic of sex, drugs, rock and roll and lack of personal accountability among the Boomers? Were the WWII heroes great at taking orders and making war but not so good at parenting, or openly communicating with their children? Does this make the "greatest generation" less great? Brokaw's thesis could/should have begun there. What changed in the culture, and when did it happen, or why so suddenly?

I am saying this as a card carrying member of the baby boom generation - born in 1947, graduated from college in 1969, and, like so many other millions of my generation, an eye witness to all that went on then and since.

Just consider for a moment that the 60's began with the inauguration of John Kennedy, not his assassination as Brokaw contends. JFK's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you ..." inaugural exhortation was actually preceded only a few minutes earlier by his bold assurance that , "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty" - quite a broad, yet popular mandate at the time. What was fomenting within the culture of the Nation that JFK did not see when he delivered that message? Was it his assassination that alone changed the country's (including the greatest generation's) call to duty, or was it much more? Was it that the event and aftermath were televised? To me, the lack of analysis on this point is a flaw.

And, this is important, because when I think of the 60's, I think of Vietnam, the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Watergate and the assassinations. I think about the advent of THE PILL (never mentioned) and the rise of the media.

The assassinations are really covered in depth, because Brokaw's list of virtual reunioneers could remember how they felt when they occurred. And yet, everybody who lived during this period can specifically remember their where and when. Vietnam is redundantly, if inartfully, contrasted to Iraq. OK - got it.

But, shouldn't Brokaw have investigated how a country that had been consecutively led by such esteemed leaders - historical giants - such as Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and [potentially] Kennedy could be so disappointingly managed by historical lightweights Johnson, Ford, Nixon and Carter? And, what have been their hangover effects on the baby boomers, particularly Presidents Clinton and Bush? Has their hubris and arrogance and contempt for the people they govern(ed) been born from the roots of causes leading to the fractious Democratic Convention of 1968?

Maybe it is easier to write a history of the 1860's than the 1960's because there are far fewer people around who can recall or dispute the important events of those times. As a baby boomer, I know that many of the the events of the 60's will influence our generation for the next 30 years, or until enough of us die off to allow another generation to hold sway.

But a book such as this demands analysis to go along with the virtual observations of people, famous and random, whose recall and feelings are arguably no better than any of the millions who also endured those turbulent times.

- Did the 60's permanently eliminate the idea of trust in government?
- Did the rise of the media with their "gotcha" mentality lead to distrust of our leaders?
- Did the 60's create the me-first greed ethos that has overtaken corporate management?
- Did they inadverdently re-segregate people into too many small sub-groups of "victims," each equally eager to play their "card" to obtain justice?
- Did they enable society to reduce standards and lower personal accountability - essentially reversing Kennedy's call for patriotism to "Ask your country what it can do for you, ask not what you can do for your country ..."?
- ... and, has all the lowering of standards as a means of appeasing a variety of victims' groups also lowered the Country's ability to compete in a global economy?
- Net net, were the 60's good for the overall long term well being of America?

After seeing Brokaw discussing his book on television, I was expecting to read his analysis and opinions - after all, the book is 611 pages. Perhaps Mr. Brokaw is what he is, and DeToqville he is not. Too bad. "Boom" is history by anecdote, and unfortunately a Bust.
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
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New York, World War, United States, White House, Democratic Party, Los Angeles, Republican Party, African American, Vietnam War, North Vietnamese, Richard Nixon, South Vietnamese, Bobby Kennedy, San Francisco, Ronald Reagan, President George, James Meredith, Lyndon Johnson, Iraq War, Free Speech Movement, Rolling Stone, Sam Brown, Robert Kennedy, President Kennedy, New Hampshire
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