Customer Reviews

The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As a Generation Xer, it would be easy to buy into the unfortunate media cariacture of Baby Boomers as a largely materialistic and self-indulgent generation bent on exploiting the American dream for their own selfish desires.

But that is simply not the truth.

In a wonderfully written and meticulously argued book, Mr. Steinhorn has thoughtfully described how Baby Boomers have done more to hold America true to its values than preceding generations. On issues ranging from civil rights, womens rights, environmental standards, the workplace and education, the battles fought and won by Baby Boomers have made America a more open, free and egalitarian society.

I read with great interest this important, provocative book. While it may create controvery among those who Mr. Steinhorn describes as "cultural Luddites", nobody can dispute the facts presented by the author.

This is really a fascinating and stimulating book that not only challenges conventional wisdom on boomers but also offers an important perspective on our society and political culture. It'll no doubt anger the self-rightous boomer bashers, and it will certainly raise the blood pressure of social conservatives who wish a return to the social order of the Fifties. But for all the rest of us, this book speaks to our lives and experiences, and it does so eloquently and powerfully. Steinhorn's essential point is that we're a more inclusive and tolerant country than we were before the boomer years - that boomers brought about social change based on the essential values of equality, personal freedom, pluralism, and environmental protection. Unfortunately, we too often take these gains for granted. Boomers have their problems, and Steinhorn acknowledges them, but which generation didn't have problems? And does anyone realistically want to go back to the old ways? So read this book. It'll be an eye-opener.

This book was on my desk for a few days before I dug in. The title had annoyed me a bit. Did the Baby Boomer legacy really need defending? I lived through all of it, was a part of it. Absolutely astounding accomplishments over the last forty years. Sure, I've heard the boomer-bashers, but does anybody take them seriously? They're clueless. Someone like Joe Queenan can be very funny, I've laughed out loud at some of his comments - but basically his whole shtick is to shock - and he's most well-known as one of Howard Stern's second (or third, or forth) bananas. You don't take someone like Queenan (or most conservative and all neocon boomer-bashers) seriously.

The book was still on my desk. I'd glance at it three or four times a day. 'Will this fellow talk about this and this and this? I bet he won't mention this and this and this. And I'm sure he won't talk about this or this or this, because those things aren't on the radar anymore. And I really want to know why this book even had to be written.'

I dig in. Professor Steinhorn is so far ahead of me. He discusses everything - including scores of topics and accomplishments that never occurred to me - even as I lived through them in the 60s, 70s, 80s. What a great read. Why did he feel the need to write this book? It's answered on the first page.

Obviously, I agree with most of the other readers posting here (and all the good reviews are taken) - so I'll simply give you some gut reactions:

Every chapter was a catalyst. I lived my life over and over again -- growing up in the 50s and 60s, politics, culture, social interactions, workplace issues, music, television, religion, women's rights - all dissected and discussed - and brought back all sorts of memories.

The racism ones (I haven't thought of these incidents in thirty or more years): When I was eight or nine, we were selling our house in White Plains, New York. A potential buyer came over, and my father called me downstairs and asked, "How many Negro boys and girls are in your class?" Well, I'd never considered such a question, had to think about it. I figured that almost half were, so I said something like "Probably twelve." No sale there! It was my first real experience with racism. My father was upset, but wasn't mad at me. However, he said, "The next time someone comes over and I ask you that question, say 'two.'" Gee, now it was explained to me that Negroes were bad, and lying was good.

My father wasn't some ignorant doofus, by the way. He grew up in the Midwest, and had a very, very good white collar job in the citadel of intellectual and cultural enlightenment: New York City.

Summer, 1965: Our family took a vacation to California, and I was on a flight with my father. The Watts Riots were happening, and if you know the flight path to LAX, planes fly right over South L.A. There was an announcement about it by the pilot (although everybody knew about it) - and there was a hush inside the plane as everybody took turns looking out the windows. I remember my father's comment: "Down there - those are nig***s. Back home, they're Negroes." I'm still not sure what this meant. I'm guessing that his only contact with 'Negroes' for most of his life had probably been the shoeshine guys at Grand Central Station and listening to Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole.

1970: While visiting my maternal grandmother in Virginia during a college break, I was strolling around town and somehow started playing a bit of baseball with some Black children. Just for five or ten minutes or so. I can't remember why - but there I was, having lots of fun with a bunch of kids. When I told my grandmother about the incident, she was horrified. I could have been beat up, even shot by (I'm guessing) white folk seeing me playing with them. "And," she added, "Don't call them Blacks. They like to be called Darkies."

Hundreds of stories like the above (but the subjects and through-lines were different) popped into my head while devouring "The Greater Generation." If you're a Baby Boomer, be prepared for major memory jogs. If you're younger, this is a great history of the social changes since the 1960s.

If I start fashioning metaphors, drawing comparisons, it will get convoluted - but there's this movie: Pleasantville. "The Greater Generation" is the book. We laugh at Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver for different reasons than we might have when the shows first aired - because in retrospect it really was like that back then.

Do you want to know why leading-edge Boomers are so gaga over their grandchildren? The Millennials (roughly born between 1987 and 2000) are already showing signs of that odd combination of cynicism and idealism. And when did that last happen? The Sixties. Talk about inclusive - Millennials are all over the map ethnically - Asian and Hispanic cultures will be seriously mainstream. We're in for some rousing domestic fireworks in ten or fifteen years. They'll change our country for the better -- as we have.

I hope they outshine us in every way. This will be the real Baby Boomers' legacy.

Bonus: Steinhorn does a brilliant job deconstructing the sordid rhetorical techniques neocon pundits employ. From Brooks to O'Reilly, he denudes all these desperate, last-gasp Luddites. Watch a few episodes of The Colbert Report and read this book. It's all you'll need to know.

Steinhorn has important things to say about how America has changed and who changed it. Tom Brokaw who coined the "greatest generation", is not a boomer. He is a pre-boomer, and upon graduating from college, the world was his oyster in the way it never was for any boomer, despite boomer mythology. Brokaw is the archetypical beneficiary of the "greatest generation" world view. His book fed the media's simplistic line about boomers and this line has never been challenged.

Steinhorn speculates that WWII, the cornerstone of the adulation of the greatest generation, would have been equally well fought by the boomers. He cites evidence of their bravery in a war that had little meaning, and the bravery it took to oppose it.

Many of the greatest generation remember(ed) grandparents who accepted slavery and the non-sufferage of women (even "Wilsonian Democracy" was never meant to include women) and the parents of those grandparents knew those who accepted Indian removal. Social progress was made because this generation did break from these things. It may be the trauma of the depression and the war, but they did not as a group rise to the occasion in the 60's & 70's. Their predominant view was "we had our war, this one is yours". They defeated the Equal Rights Amemdment. Many sold their homes at the first sign of an integrated neighborhood. Steinhorn presents figures showing that the generation's survivors do not relent. They continue to defend segregated neighborhoods and condemn gays and working mothers and more.

As Steinhorn says, this revolution was not the stuff of headlines. If cultural revolution didn't have such a negative pall, we might be able to apply it, because that is what it was. It was mircro and local. In schools it took the form of challenging dress codes, band music and why girls couldn't play soccer. In families it took the form of choosing friends, hairstyles, privacy and dating. Slowly, slowly more freedom of choice, freedom of being the self set in. While there may be some nostalgia associated with the times, anyone who grew up in the 50s would never go back to the those Leave to Beaver days.

I believe there is an evolution of consciousness that comes with freedom, education and security. Boomer-like consciousness may have sprouted in America with the 1920's affluence, but the depression and the war held it back. I believe Tienneman Square happened because Chinese youth had enough education, affluence and freedom to question the "establishment". I believe that in the Middle East nothing will change until a boomer-like generation challenges their elders at the political level to do the suicide bombing and at the family level ask: Why can't I date? Why can't my hair feel the sunshine? Why do I have to avenge the death of so and so who died at the hand of so and so 600 years ago?

I have not read this book in its entirety. However, speaking as a member of Generation X, or Millenials as we now are more commonly called, I see both positive and negative points in what I have read so far.

The arguments the author makes in defense of the Baby Boomers are most definitely valid. When you look at the greater picture, the Baby Boomers were a revolutionary generation that altered American more than any before. They were a generation that redefined patriotism as meaning something other than total loyalty to political leaders. They were the generation that changed the standard of living, and raise the bar for greater personal freedom and independence of the individual. And they were largely the generation that overcame social upheaval the likes of which had not been seen in nearly a century, to create a nation more diverse yet unified than it had ever been.

However, I feel the author tends to spend so much time trumping the triumphs of the Baby Boomers that he largely ignores their failings. Speaking as one of all too many who grew up in a broken home, the Baby Boomer's ushered in a divorce explosion that will effect those of my age group and our own children, and hence, generations yet to come. They also raised the bar of personal living perhaps a little too high, and for those my age, reality is proving a little more cruel. Indeed, going to college no longer guarantees a great career, no one can ever have their own way all the time, and indeed, sometimes your best is just not good enough.

As the Baby Boomers now enter their twiligh and my own generation bit by bit steps up to start shaping our own legacy, I have come to appreciate the great things the Baby Boomers did. But I am also starting to see the ways they failed. And while this book is definitely true to its topic-defending the Baby Boomer generation as a whole, it is by no means a fair and balanced look at what they leave behind.

More than any other book I've read, The Greater Generation captures the baby boom experience and worldview. In the process, it also says a great deal about our culture and society today, so much so that it should be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary America.

The book begins by showing how boomers inherited an America that was far from the idealized version of the Fifties that we see in our nostalgia laden media today. It reminds us that the 1950s was no golden era for women, minorities, and anyone outside the mainstream. But starting with the Sixties, Boomers began to transform America by challenging the status quo and changing the norms and values that guide our lives and institutions and relationships. Most books on boomers focus only on the Sixties, but this one shows how the Sixties were just the beginning. It describes and documents how boomers remade almost every aspect of American life. We're now more tolerant, inclusive, and equal than at any time in our history. We value diversity and pluralism. Women have more choices and men are more free to care for kids. The workplace is less hierarchical. Religion is less rigid. We give people space for their personal interests and no longer demand that they conform. The environment is now a priority.

What's so important about this book is that it tells a story that rarely shows up in the media. Once the Sixties died down, Boomers quietly accomplished all of these changes. Unfortunately, the media rarely covers social change that takes place behind the scenes and away from the lights. This book will give you an entirely new and refreshing perspective.

The book doesn't pretend to say that boomers have solved all of America's problems. But even if we're not a perfect America, we're still a better America than we were five decades ago. The book also says that boomers built on the hard work and sacrifice of previous generations. Boomers have their shortcomings, just like any other generation. But this book shows the unique and important contribution they've made.

The book also shatters the caricature of boomers that prevails in the media today, thankfully so. If the popular image of Brokaw's Greatest Generation is all virtue, the popular image of boomers is all vice. This book corrects the record. It shows, for example, how boomers volunteer in greater numbers than previous generations, and how the nonprofit sector has grown in leaps and bounds. It also shows how young people have absorbed boomer values to the point that for the first time in memory, there's no generation gap today.

So many books are built on cynicism and negativity. This book is different. It celebrates the great social changes of the last few decades and shows how we're a better America because of the quiet revolution brought about by boomers. It's one of those "must read" books, the type of buzz book that can change the way we think about society, politics, and culture. It's also beautifully and powerfully written. I strongly, strongly recommend it.

As a pre-Baby Boomer who has often been critical of the Boomer legacy, I must admit I was enormously impressed and moved by Leonard Steinhorn's "The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy." Indeed, the author has given me an entirely new perspective on what the Boomer generation was trying to achieve, did achieve, and continues to achieve. For it was this generation that put so much toil, sweat and tears -- if not blood -- into forcing America to live up to the ideals and principles of our Founding Fathers and our Constitution. In this sense, they were every bit as patriotic as the "Greatest Generation" that fought World War II. It was a patriotism rooted in our highest values and aspirations as a nation and as a people.

From the very first page, Steinhorn seizes the reader's interest -- a tribute to his superb, ever-fresh and provocative literary style, no less than to the power of his ideas, facts and fundamental premise. What's more, he is truly fair and balanced, acknowledging the excesses of the Boomer legacy while giving proper respect and credit to the "Greatest Generation."

It is also an uplifting book with an optiimistic outlook on the future and even a hopeful view of our own troubled times. "Even amid the grimmest of days," writes the author, "let us celebrate how much of a better nation we've become over the last generation."

Thanks to this most compelling book, I have a far greater appreciation of the Boomer generation and just how much it has helped "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

This book not only gets to the heart of what the baby boom generation is all about, but it also takes a new and compelling look at the fundamentals of American culture today. Steinhorn reminds us that the cultural freedoms we enjoy today did not exist in any great measure before boomers came of age -- and that it was boomers who challenged the status quo of their parents and changed America. As Steinhorn says, we too often take our current state of equality and freedom for granted. To the proverbial female basketball star who says she's not a feminist, Steinhorn says we should ask her how the ball got in her hands and who put it there.

The portrait he paints of the Fifties is vivid and important to read. It was a time when blackness was considered so unappealing that blacks bought toxic skin bleaches called "Black No More" to make them look more white -- and when whites didn't want to try on clothes that a black person had tried on at a store. It was a time when stars like Willie Mays couldn't buy homes, and when black GIs in the Greatest Generation were seated behind German POWs at USO concerts. It was the same with women -- typical were the separate classified ads in the newspapers, with some ads saying that the ideal woman for the job should be 5'7" in heels. Or when women couldn't get credit and were considered to emotional for business, politics or jury duty. It was a time when gays were arrested and interrogated -- he cites example after example of city or institution holding witchhunts to root out gay employees, and he quotes a Senate committee report saying the "one homosexual can pollute a government office." For Jews, they felt a need to have Christmas trees to fit in. For workers, it was the era of yes-men (no women, of course) and organization men. For anyone with a beard or a different way of looking at things, suspicion and distrust was how America saw them. It was the age of conformity and prejudice.

We're so different today -- so much more free, equal, inclusive, tolerant -- that most of us don't even think about how we got here. All the whiny reviews you read of this book are simply from people who hate boomers and don't understand the process of social change and how boomers transformed our culture and attitudes and institutions. Some of the critics simply hate our more socially inclusive society -- you have to pity them. But many others obviously enjoy the freedoms boomers brought forth -- but they're too filled with infantile hostility toward boomers to understand how we got from the Fifties to our better culture today. Steinhorn does such an excellent job of showing these changes that the boomer haters are simply left with nothing more than ad hominem attacks and puerile rage against this book. But any smart reader knows what Steinhorn has accomplished -- which is why this is such a buzz book and why so many people are talking about it.

Those who have actually read the book (rather than those who simply whine about its success) will see how deeply boomers have changed women's lives and men's as well -- how boomers have developed a remarkably inclusive culture that's opened its arms to every group once reviled and excluded (no, it's not perfect, but it's far better than ever, qualitatively so) -- how boomers have flattened hierarchies at work and broadened university curricula to include studies the old establishment never would have allowed -- how boomers made environmental protection a new norm, balancing the old view of progress at any cost -- how boomers made our religious culture more diverse and pluralistic -- how they created so many more choices for personal expression -- and how they essentially created and animated the nonprofit sector with its many benefits for society. It's a great and illuminating story.

Steinhorn does another important thing: he redefines what mainstream is in our culture. The media like to portray the mainstream as a folksy but bigoted majority filled with religious fundamentalists. But Steinhorn shows that the mainstream is mostly made of boomers and younger generations (yes, Xers, he shows how similar you are to boomers, so get over it) who share socially tolerant and liberal values. What the media report is really old news, as Steinhorn points out, almost like the press in the Twenties reporting that Prohibitionists were the wave of the future. But as Steinhorn shows, that old culture back then was the wave of the past. And likewise today: there's a new silent majority that's accepted our more diverse society, and because we're largely content with it, we don't get covered in the press. It's a fascinating and illuminating analysis -- should be read by anyone interested in politics and culture.

So steal this book or get it anyway you can. It really puts our cultural gains in perspective. And it's a good read -- extremely well written. One of the best books of the year.

Leonard Steinhorn's compelling and well-documented book is a major contribution to the literature on the baby boom generation. In this superbly written book, Steinhorn takes us on a journey that creatively highlights some of the major elements of the cultural revolution incited by Baby Boomers including civil rights, women's rights, consumer rights, environmental protection, to name a few. As Steinhorn states, this is a generation whose "collective efforts have made America a more vibrant, tolerant, just and equal country." As he analyzes the "cultural DNA" of this generation, Steinhorn elegantly weaves in powerful sound bites that make the reader pause and reflect on the extraordinary social changes that comprise the Baby Boomers' legacy. This "first mass media generation" has "turned youthfulness mainstream...determined not to lose the generational spark that has remade America in their youthful image."

Perceptive, engaging and brilliantly written.

Finally, someone cuts through the media stereotypes & conservative propaganda mills to tell the truth about the Baby Boomers! Leonard Steinhorn marshals an impressive array of statistics & sources to support his thesis that the influence of the Baby Boomers is both positive & permanent.

It's a compelling read for many reasons. First of all, in its reminders of just how rigid & oppressive American culture used to be if you weren't a white Christian "all-American" male. Secondly, in its reminder of just how many Boomer cultural changes are part of the national fabric now, despite the attempts of conservative dinosaurs to turn the clock back to a "golden age" that never really existed. Thirdly, in its candid quotes from several major conservative thinkers who pretty much concede that conservatism (at least as they define it) has already lost the cultural war, and that the influence of the new culture will count for more in the long run than temporary political victories. Finally, in its analysis of current right-wing trends as the desperate grasp for fading power by those about to lose it forever.

Yes, the Boomers had plenty of faults. That's called being human. But at their best, they fought for the best aspects of the human experience, they took astonishing chances with their own lives, and they insisted on the primacy of the human soul over entrenched authoritarian power, whether political, spiritual, or psychological. It's not the culmination of human evolution, of course, but a solid foundation stone for future generations to build on -- and that's a worthy legacy to the world.

Most highly recommended!