Publishers Weekly
11/30/2020
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. Agent: William Callahan, InkWell Management. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Helen Andrews has written the first book to treat the Baby Boomers not just as youthful dreamers but also as ruthless wielders of power, and to account for what their dreams have cost us. A groundbreaking reassessment of the last generation by one of the bravest and best writers of this one.”—Christopher Caldwell, author of The Age of Entitlement
“Baby boomers (and I confess I am one): prepare to squirm and shake your increasingly arthritic little fists. For here comes essayist Helen Andrews, incendiary new critic of left-wing pieties, youthful scourge of 'disastrous' sixties idealism and its legacies, and all-round millennial conservative whippersnapper par excellence. Even when infuriating or wrong—and Andrews can be both—she is irresistibly intelligent, writes like a dream, and asks questions so uncomfortable and fundamental that the bravery, honesty, and moral seriousness of her approach cannot be gainsaid. Boomers—shall we go there?—is an essential book for our woebegotten time. Excuse me, folks, while I kiss the sky.”—Terry Castle, Walter A. Haas Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University, author of The Professor
“As a committed but self-hating Baby Boomer, I've read Helen Andrews' work with an uneasy mixture of trepidation and admiration—admiration because she combines a luminous intelligence with a wit that's as glistening and sharp as a straight razor, and trepidation because I realize she is about to turn those weapons on me and my kind. We deserve it, of course, but that doesn't make it any less scary.”—Andrew Ferguson, staff writer at The Atlantic, author of Crazy U and Land of Lincoln
Kirkus Reviews
2020-11-24
A cultural critic offers a takedown of baby boomers.
In a book modeled on Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918), Andrews delivers a millennial’s arguments against the boomers and their lofty ideals. Though the author’s idea is well conceived, the narrative suffers from disorganization and conservative pieties. Rather than broadly attacking a vast and complex generation, Andrews wisely sets her sights on six well-known targets: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor. These figures give the author the opportunity to tee off on many of her bêtes noires, including Silicon Valley, school busing, and the idea that pop culture should be taken seriously. The narrative is a loosely organized collection of essays, the best of which is the one about Sorkin, in a fairly conservative intellectual vein; it’s well researched and written with brio and attitude but not enough cohesion. A few of these pieces loop back to the boomer premise in only the most superficial way, with a paragraph about boomers inserted seemingly as an afterthought. Andrews lays out her case clearly in the preface: “They inherited prosperity, social cohesion and functioning institutions. They passed on debt, inequality, moribund churches, and a broken democracy….The boomers should not be allowed to shuffle off the world stage until they have been made to regret” their failures. The prose is mostly engaging, but sometimes the author simply misses the mark—e.g., when she tries to take down James Baldwin: “Baldwin’s writing was inspired not by oppression but by his personal neuroses…his error was to project his pain onto the black experience.” Were Baldwin still alive, he might remind Andrews that he’s not a boomer. For a more incisive exploration of the millennial-boomer rift, try Anne Helen Petersen’s Can’t Even (2020).
Andrews is fair in much of her criticism, but one wishes for a more cogent argument.
