Boomers
The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
"Baby Boomers (and I confess I am one): prepare to squirm and shake your increasingly arthritic little fists. For here comes essayist Helen Andrews."--Terry Castle
With two recessions and a botched pandemic under their belt, the Boomers are their children's favorite punching bag. But is the hatred justified? Is the destruction left in their wake their fault or simply the luck of the generational draw?
In Boomers, essayist Helen Andrews addresses the Boomer legacy with scrupulous fairness and biting wit. Following the model of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, she profiles six of the Boomers' brightest and best. She shows how Steve Jobs tried to liberate everyone's inner rebel but unleashed our stultifying digital world of social media and the gig economy. How Aaron Sorkin played pied piper to a generation of idealistic wonks. How Camille Paglia corrupted academia while trying to save it. How Jeffrey Sachs, Al Sharpton, and Sonya Sotomayor wanted to empower the oppressed but ended up empowering new oppressors.
Ranging far beyond the usual Beatles and Bill Clinton clichés, Andrews shows how these six Boomers' effect on the world has been tragically and often ironically contrary to their intentions. She reveals the essence of Boomerness: they tried to liberate us, and instead of freedom they left behind chaos.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Andrews debuts with a scathing critique of the baby boomer generation's "dismal legacy." Describing the "boomer revolution" as "the most dramatic sundering of Western civilization since the Protestant Reformation," she examines the fallout of the 1960s in bracing profiles of six public figures. In Andrews's view, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs represents Silicon Valley's mix of "idealism and obnoxiousness," screenwriter Aaron Sorkin embodies the ideological conformity of Hollywood, and economist Jeffrey Sachs personifies the hypocrisy of American policy makers in their continuation of colonialist practices under the auspices of liberalism and globalization. Andrews also cites the ubiquity of online pornography as evidence that the sexual revolution backfired, claims that race relations have stagnated and even gone backwards in recent years, and blames liberal Supreme Court justices for "demolish long-standing precedent... to give their humanitarian sentiments free rein." She concludes with a passionate, albeit despondent, call for millennials to "break free" from the influence of the 1960s and stop believing that "narcissism is the highest form of patriotism." Andrews makes some incisive points about baby boomer hubris, but undermines her argument with glaring omissions (the antiwar movement, for instance) and one-sided data points. Conservatives will rally to Andrews's caustic appraisal of the culture wars; liberals need not apply.
