From either side of the political divide this book’s speakers agree about 1968’s devastating effect on the Democratic Party. Brokaw was an offer that couldn’t be refused, has the strategic insight that while the ’60s were perceived as a heyday for antiwar sentiment, nearly 60 percent of the vote in 1968 went to Richard Nixon and George Wallace. And Karl Rove, whose appearance in this book is evidence that an interview request from Mr. He steps forward to decry the partisan nature of present-day politics (“the failure of goodwill, and of a willingness to find common ground in a country that in election after election is so evenly divided, is a disgrace”) and says that color-blind, merit-based help for students is a more workable idea than affirmative action.īut he also elicits commentary from figures like Bill Clinton (who believes his ’60s ideals are untarnished) and Newt Gingrich (who sharply assails Republican ineptitude at governing, which he links to too much facility with ’60s power-for-the-sake-of-power techniques). Brokaw’s emphatic editorializing on certain issues. The answers found in “Boom!” are mostly anecdotal, punctuated occasionally by Mr. What is the legacy of the ’60s’ bitterly polarizing political tactics? Of the civil rights movement? Of the draft and the Vietnam War? Of the showy protest ethos that defined the era’s popular culture? Of widespread drug use? How did college kids who were willing to ingest anything turn so fastidious about organic products? When the personal freedoms of the ’60s waned, what happened to the idea of personal responsibility? What changed? He asks that question in many different ways. Brokaw is a canny, perceptive interviewer with an honest interest in what other people have to say. As thick as the smoke were the four-letter words that suddenly were everywhere.”) On the page, as he is on the screen, Mr. (“The heady, sweet aroma of marijuana frequently permeated the air. His writing makes up in intimacy what it lacks in fancy footwork, even if a quota of ’60s cultural boilerplate is part of the package. This book would be an odd and sprawling compendium were it not for the unifying effect of Mr. “Boom!” is as interesting for the effects it can catalyze as for those it actually describes.
But he approaches this magnum opus with warmth, curiosity and conviction, the same attributes that worked so well for his “Greatest Generation.” And he will succeed in prompting readers to step back and do some soul searching. Nor is he the most reductive: Although “Boom!” roams all over the map (and loosely defines the ’60s as the period from 1963 to 1974), it arrives at few definite conclusions. Brokaw is not the first, last or most incisive writer to take stock of 1968 and its youthquake. He also takes on the perilous job of wondering what it all means. Brokaw serves as a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, awakening to marvel at four decades’ worth of changes in the book’s dozens of interviewees. Although he describes his role in this process as that of moderator and class president, there’s more to it than that.
I got that boom boom boom full#
It stages a virtual reunion of America’s Class of 1968, accompanied by a full spectrum of opinions about the impact of that pivotal year. Tom Brokaw’s “Boom!” orchestrates a baby-boom epiphany.