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

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For people like myself, who came of age in the early 60's, this book is just great. Brokaw deserves tremendous credit for his professionalism and his agreeable style. It was wonderful to retrace those steps, relive those times with Tom (also my age), especially through the biographies of all those people. Wonderful that he thought to put in so many photos of them, then and now!

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

Date undefined

It isn't fair of me to compare Boom! to The Greatest Generation, since the topics are dissimilar and few subjects contain the power and scope of a discussion of World War Two. That said, Boom! was not on the same plane as Brokaw's earlier book, and frankly this one bored me, which came as a surprise. I only mention The Greatest Generation in the same context as Boom! because Mr. Brokaw and many others did before me. To be blunt, Boom! rode on Generation's coat tails.

I suppose I can point out two main problems with Boom!--subject matter and tone.

Firstly, admittedly, I did not intensely care about its subject matter or (with some exceptions) the people whose stories Boom! contained. Several hundred pages on the causes of the 1960's divide in American society does not make for compelling or uplifting reading, and the players in those times were frequently unworthy of enshrining. The opportunities Brokaw gave his interviewees to reflect too often became acts of glorifying what to them was a time of great personal meaning: more often than not their "glory days." Add to this the simple truth that I found myself disliking most of those about whom I was reading, disapproving of Brokaw's closed-mindedness once he had decided which side he would come down supporting (c'mon does he have to use the word "redneck" so readily?) and feeling that too many of those re-telling the story of the "real" (as opposed to the calendar) 1960's weren't worthy of the star treatment they were getting.

Yes, I was disappointed in Boom! and finished it knowing less about the zeitgeist of the era than about the egos of those who were there. Brokaw was able to use his personal fame and street cred from The Greatest Generation to get a bloated book published when a less famous writer would have had her manuscript cut to ribbons by a less fawning editor. After Boom! I....find myself not liking Tom Brokaw that much anymore.