Transcripts For CSPAN3 Generations History Of Americas Future 20170325

15842069, whats it all about . Neil well, generations is a whole new way of looking at how the past shapes the future. Our book retells the entire story of america from the perspective of separate generations moving through time. We follow each of these generations from childhood to old age, starting with the first puritan colonists and going through the small children of today. Along the way we discovered some outstanding patterns in history that seemed to be recurring in the appearance of generations. We found, for instance, that every generation belongs to one of four lifecycle types that seems to repeat in the same order over time. The appearance of young war heroes is almost always followed by the appearance of a young generation that appears indecisive and conformist to others. The appearance in history of passionate, young moralists is always followed by a generation which appears wild and uneducated to elders. So, what we do is take these patterns and try to use them to show america where were headed in the future. Brian william strauss, coauthor of the same book, where did you get this idea . William i wrote a book about 15 years ago called chance and circumstance that was a history of how the vietnam war affected my generation, which we call here the boom generation. Back then i was quite interested , in how we were growing up so unlike our parents. Early 1970ss and were in many respects a broadscale attack by my generation against the institutions built by what amounted to our parents who had so indulgently raised us back in the 1950s. And i was wondering, had this ever happened before in American History. Back in the early 1980s, when i was working in congress for senator percy i was noticing the , tremendous harms that were happening to the next generation of children, how the mantle of americas poorest generation, the most povertyprone generation, passed directly from a previous generation of elders to a new batch of children without ever touching any of the generations in between. I thought this was a wrong of historic proportions and i, again, was curious whether Something Like this had ever happened before in American History. As i looked more closely at it and as neil joined the project about five years ago and the two of us began working, we discovered that, yes, indeed, this had happened before, that American Society had pulsed to rhythms both within the family and within the world at large. Thats how our idea of writing the full story of america around the 18 generations of our history first came about. Brian how did you two guys meet . William we met about neil we met about five years ago. Basically we were just following the same interests. In addition to bills book about the vietnam generation, i had written a book with Pete Peterson called on borrowed time, basically about how todays oldage entitlements programs may not be there for todays younger generations when they retire. I became interested in how we think about allocating resources between the young and the old. Why is it that some generations when they reach old age are rewarded for a lifetime of great achievement, and why is that other generations reach old age and they slip into poverty and no one seems to care about them . So, i became interested, too, in looking at patterns in the past. What was remarkable is that when bill and i got around to looking so, i became interested, too, in i went to school in the bay area palo alto. How did you get out here in washington . Neil well, thats a long story. I first came out to indianapolis where i was a managing editor of a magazine. I went to graduate school at yale in history and economics. I worked for about eight or 10 years as a policy analyst. I finally came down to washington and continued writing and joined bill on this project. Brian and before i ask bill the same questions, who is Pete Peterson . Neil Pete Peterson is former secretary of commerce, former chairman of lehman brothers, kuhn, loeb, now chairman of the Blackstone Group in new york. Brian you mentioned senator percy earlier, and anybody thats watched this network has seen your work with the Capitol Steps. What is the Capitol Steps, and how did you get to sen. Percys office . William well, i, like neil, am a boomer who grew up in the out in california and then went 1950s to harvard in the late 60s in the middle of that campus turmoil. Graduated from law school and the Kennedy School there and came to washington; worked in variety of jobs in addition to writing that book about the vietnam war. I started working with sen. Percy right around the time Elaina Newport and i formed the Capitol Steps along with jim aidala back in 1981. Over the past nine years with elaina, i have written about 400 song parodies about the foibles of washington many of them the same foibles that neil and i write about in a very serious tone in this particular book. I guess im one of those unusual people in the Entertainment Industry who after the show is over ill go home and read emerson and steinbeck and write notes about what happened in the rather than what some other 1870s people in the business are known to do after shows. Brian if someone has never seen the Capitol Steps, what would they see and where do you entertain . William well, we have a musicalpolitical satire show. We perform all across the country. We do public shows here in washington, d. C. , at chelseas cabaret once a week on saturdays. We do about 300 shows a year. Brian and it used to be for fun . William it used to be strictly for fun and for charities. After senator percy lost in 1984, we decided we would go pro and we now are a professional troupe. We have nine record albums. Brian you dont perform with the Capitol Steps . Neil i dont perform, no. I dont think id dare to. William when i team with neil i try to be historical. When i team with Elaina Newport, i try to get at least a little bit hysterical. Brian i want to show our audience a chart thats in your book. I dont know if we can get any closer on it than we are right there, but you can see that you have labeled generations. Missionary means that you were what . William a missionary is a peer of franklin roosevelt. These were the children who were born in the aftermath of the civil war. I would say that it was a time when the family was a warm place in American Society. It was the first time christmas in the modern sense was celebrated in america with a Jolly Santa Claus and christmas cards and a tree. Brian so you were born between 1860 and 1882. William well, youd be over 109 right now, and there are about 1,000 of you out there in america and i hope at least some of them are watching here today. We remember them mainly as the wise men of world war ii, the elders who steered america through the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and world war ii. Brian neil, how about the lost generation . Neil well, the lost generation, born between 1883 and 1900, was first noticed in america as the exploited street urchins and newsies of turnofthecentury america. These were the kids who suffered from the highest child employment rates in American History. They came of age labeled as bad by older generations who considered them a little bit wild and uneducated. They were tarred a bit by the 1920s and some of the bad people who came out of that decade. After the Great Depression, when they were the one age group in midlife that never received any subsidy from the government, they settled into a rather reclusive old age, an old age in which in the postwar america they restrengthened the american family, they paid back the National Debt and slowed down the culture and gave generously to the younger generations that came behind them. Brian bill strauss, what does g. I. Stand for . William well, the g. I. Generation where the first g. I. Joes as the missionary gen. Marshall described them, the best damn kids in the world, from world war ii. We remember them swarming ashore on the beaches at iwo jima and normandy. America first met them with Charles Lindbergh and walt disney and the first boy and girl scouts that america ever had. These were team players and good kids, smart kids a little unlike the lost generation bad kids of just a couple of decades before. They felt their major brush with history and with heroism when young, and coming out of the war they felt a huge generational slingshot, which energized them and the country. They have since then held the presidency of the United States longer than any other generation in our history, from president s kennedy through bush, and they also upon entering elderhood found themselves attacked by the boom generation and have since then separated into a Senior Citizen community. We never before used the term Senior Citizen widely until we associated that kind of busy, optimistic, upbeat atmosphere with this generation in elderhood. Of course, over the past two decades, america has funneled an enormous amount of resources into health care and retirement subsidies for this generation enormously beyond what the lost generation knew and far beyond what neil and i expect will be available for other generations. Neil let me just add here that an important theme of our book is how certain personality traits follow a generation from youth to old age. One of the characteristics of the g. I. s back in the 1930s and 1940s from somewhere over the rainbow and accentuate the positive, is the incredible confidence about the future and a passion to be busy, to be building and to be constructive. Brian what about the silent generation, 1925 to 1942 . Thats when people were born, during those years. William well, the silent generation were the ones who refined and added nuance to what the g. I. s were doing. They, too, felt the pressure of what the initials g. I. Stand for, which is general issue the regularity of the society. They came of age in a world that they felt was overly conformist and set about on a life mission of adding nuance and complexity and other directedness and cultural pluralism to a society that when young felt oversimple to them. They fused the white and afroamerican cultures to produce rock n roll. They were the leading early proponents of the Civil Rights Movements, the nonviolent movements. Virtually all of the prominent africanamerican leaders of the Civil Rights Movement from the first children who desegregated the schools at little rock up through the Jesse Jacksons and Douglas Wilders of today have been members of the silent generation. But they had the misfortune to reach midlife all the silent generation did at a time when the consciousness revolution of the 1960s hit. This is when they were the guardians of the family, and it splintered families on their watch. It resulted in a substantial weakening of the protection afforded to the young. Then in the last couple of decades weve seen the silent generation be the dominant generation in the congress. This has been a time when Public Confidence in the ability of the congress to actually solve the nations problems has eroded. They are zero for six in runs for the presidency. They could very well be the first generation never to elect a president. Brian neil, boom. Neil the boom generation, born 1943 to 1960, first arrived as the victory babies of world war ii. They were also the first dr. Spock babies, who told parents to raise their children a bit more indulgently, with a bit more relaxed style of nurturing. Give them what they want materially so these kids could think about deeper values and deeper meanings. 43cohorts e those born in 43 we later met during the freespeech movement at berkeley in 1965. This was the same college class. They went on to add passion and violence to the protest movement of the 1960s. During the when everyone 1970s, expected the boomers to become a great new Political Force in american politics, they instead entered a political remission. By 1980, they had become the yuppie, and they concentrated on a certain cultural perfectionism. Rather than involving themselves with politics, they detached themselves from institutional life, from having families, from having steady jobs. Today theyre beginning to enter , midlife, and theyre beginning to show a puritanical streak. The same generation that 20 years ago trusted no one over 30 is today beginning to police the morals of everyone under 30. Now, this is a pattern, as with all these generations, that we see in every previous generation of this type. We expect to see a lot more of that sterner tone from the boomers as they move into their 50s. Brian both of you are boomers, right . Neil thats right. William thats right. I was born in 1947 and neil in 1951. Now, you see, we define the boom generation differently from demographers. You often hear reference to the years 19461964 as mapping the baby boom. We think thats an interesting statement about the fertility patterns of American Parents during that time, but it doesnt tell you about the personality of the generation. The most important thing to look for in defining a generation is how the members of that generation define themselves. If you ask people who were born between 19431945 whether they feel like boomers, whether theyve always felt like it, generally they will say, absolutely. Similarly, you ask members of what we call the 13th generation whether they are 19611964, boomers, and they say, please, god help me, no. Brian and those you also refer to as thirteeners . William the 13th generation in American History dating back to benjamin franklin. These are the 13th to know the american nation and flag. They also are faced with a real hardluck life cycle reminiscent of what the old lost generation knew. The number 13 is a good reflection of that. Its also a slippery label, something that the kids themselves like because theyre tired of being criticized by elders, being told that theyre part of a baby bust group that is disappointing when compared with the boom. Neil one thing we talk about with the 13th generation is how attitudes toward children changed very dramatically in the early 1960s and through the 1970s. The 13th generation are the first babies people took pills not to have. As the 1960s went on we saw a new kind of movie come into popularity, the rosemarys baby, the exorcist type film which depicted the child as devil, as bad, mean and selfish. Many of the thirteeners today in their late 20s remember that period, and their sense of identity, their sense of self, has in some ways been permanently shaped by that. Today, by contrast, since the early 1980s, weve had a whole new batch of cuddly baby movies. Today, with the emergence of yet a new generation, babies are to be protected. We see baby on board bumper stickers everywhere, and people think that children must be given a Better National mission and must be given structure as children. William and we call them the millennial generation. Brian the ones that were born between 19822003. William kids who are presently in third grade and younger. Neil its when we saw a sudden change in peoples attitude toward divorce, toward family, towards a structure in discipline in schools a rethinking of many of the assumptions in the education experiments that many people in retrospect believe went wrong during the 1970s. Brian there is available for anyone who wants to read it and im going to bring it up here wide swings in the way people feel about your book, as you well know, from reviewers to the jacket. One of the strongest statements made on the jacket about this book comes from senator albert gore junior. Before i read it, why senator gore . Why did you pick him . William he asked to see an early manuscript of the book a couple of years ago and we passed it to him, and he felt that this book told the story of history in a way that people his age could connect with. It was unlike anything else that he had encountered. Brian im not too sure this is an easy answer. How would he know, for instance, that you were doing this book . Is this something that everybody around town has known for a while . William well, because he appeared onstage with the Capitol Steps, and i chatted with him about it. He actually has a wonderful singing voice, too, as well as being a good judge of books. Brian i bring him up because his statement is very strong. Generations, this is the name of your book, is the most stimulating book on American History ive ever read. Does that surprise you . Neil well, it pleases us. We hope it doesnt surprise us too much. We try to bring history alive and tell it from the Vantage Point of the people who actually lived it. Most historians dont tell history that way. Brian he says, as thomas kuhn predicted in the structure of scientific revolutions, who was thomas kuhn . Neil well, he was a historian of the history of science who wrote that disciplines are periodically transformed by sudden paradigm shifts, for instance, when copernicus suggested that explaining planets as revolving around the sun could simplify and improve explanations of how the universe worked. Brian let me finish that quote, as thomas kuhn predicted in the structure of scientific revolutions, all disciplines of learning are periodically transformed by great works of interpretation, capable of producing a paradigmatic shift in thinking. I think generations is such a work in American History. Why all of a sudden has the word paradigm become so used in this town . William well, people are looking for a new way to connect themselves to the larger story of america. That is the problem. Weve felt adrift over the past 10 years, and we think that the way history has been presented over the past couple of decades has been more in terms of the little pieces and people are not as interested in the little pieces now. Theyre looking for a unifying vision. We havent had unifying visions of the story of america for decades now, and were trying to provide it in this book. Neil theres a generational dimension to this. I think paradigm is an especially popular word among boomers like ourselves. Brian what does it mean . Neil it means a single pattern which puts all the pieces in the proper relation so its easily understandable. We have a theory here of a cyclical pattern of childnurturing, comingofage experience, which explains, we believe, a lot about why American History fluctuates back and forth. For instance between periods of , National Emergency and period of spiritual awakening. William for example, there was another paradigm of American History that people all remember from the 1890s, and that was Frederick Jackson turners frontier theory. That at the time was a simplifying point which changed the way people viewed themselves and their country. They realized the frontier was ending, they were grappling for something thats new. If youre talking about a shift in thinking, its something that perhaps could change the way americans approach the future. We talk, for example, about endowments. Theres been a lot of writing about empowerment, what some people say is the paradigm of the bush administration. I think we would argue that empowerment is what people were doing in the 1980s with the selfimmersion. Endowment is what we are more likely to be thinking about as we move through the 1990s and beyond when we focus on how we can contribute to a Better Future for children about whom the country is beginning to care more. Brian on the back of the jacket you have quotes from david stockman, jody powell, lawrence mead, william niskanen, richard neustadt, father theodore hesburgh, marilyn fergeson and cheryl russell. If my memory serves me properly, theyre all over the lot politically. Did you do that on purpose . William oh, yes. Thats just the way this book is turning out. We could have added quotes by Newt Gingrich and Pat Schroeder saying essentially the same thing. Al gore is sending this book to every member of congress, he believes in it so much. Were finding that it doesnt matter whether youre democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, theres plenty in here that will please you and some things that will displease you. Our purpose is not to advance any political agenda, but to get people to think more seriously about themselves and how they fit into the long story of america past, present and future. Brian one of the first effects you had on me was i noticed that in the first pages you kept mentioning homer. I remember reading homes years and years ago, so i went out and got a copy. One of the most interesting things i found is that it says on the back, the greatest tale of all time. It sells for 2. 95, which isnt a bad deal. [laughter] brian lets see what your book sells for today. It sells for 22. 95. Neil yes, a lot of inflation there. Brian anyway, i want to ask you about homer in a second. I also clipped the Washington Post review by jay dolan. William thats actually the New York Times. Brian im sorry, the New York Times. Do you know who jay dolan is . William well, jay dolan works or has worked for father hesburgh. Father hesburgh thought our book was a monumental work. Jay dolan is a professor of, i think, catholic history, and he thinks that you cant find a unifying vision in American History. We just have a disagreement with him. Brian what does it do to you when you read in the New York Times, as history, generations does not make the grade. It pretends to offer a new interpretation of the past, but it is too contrived to be taken seriously, and as a guide to the future it is about as reliable as a neighborhood fortune teller. William well, we also noticed in the review that he is concerned about how we cannot define a silent generation, that its just too diverse. He says that there are probably are thousands, even millions, of people who do not fit into the pattern of ambivalence that we identify within generations. Weve never tried to say that any individual generation is going to be monochromatic. Itll obviously include all kinds of people. But as you look at generations as social units, we consider it to be at least as powerful and, in our view, far more powerful than other social groupings such as economic class, race, sex, religion and political parties. Neil which, by the way, he takes us to task for not talking about class, race, sex, and so forth, which are probably generalizations not even as effective as a generation to Say Something about how people think and behave. One of the things to understand is that most historians never look at history in terms of generations. They prefer to tell history as a seamless row of 55yearold leaders who always tend to think and behave the same way but they dont and they never have. If you look at the way americas 55yearold leaders were acting in the you know, the ebullient 1960s, and confidence of the jfks and lbjs and Hubert Humphreys and compare them with todays leaders in congress the indecision, the lack of surefootedness i think you would have to agree that 55yearolds do not always act the same way and youre dealing with powerful generational forces at work that explain why one generation of war veterans, war heroes, and another generation which came of age in very different circumstances tend to have very different instincts about acting in the world. William the kinds of historians who are drawn to our book and im sure it will be very controversial among academics because we are presenting something that is so new but the kinds who are drawn to it are the ones who themselves have focused on the human life cycle rather than just the sequential series of events. Some good examples of that are Morton Keller up at brandeis and David Hackett fischer. These are people who have noticed the power in not just generations, but the shifts that have happened over time in the way americans have treated children and older people and have tried to link that to the broader currents of history. Brian in this review he also levels some charges halfway through. He says, when history does fit into their scheme, they make things up, as they have done on the civil war epic. According to their formula, the civil war cycle stretched from the but only three generations 1820s18 80s, emerged in this cycle rather than the four their theory requires. Why . Because the civil war happened too soon according to their calculations and in order for their version of history to come out right in the 20th century, the authors are forced to argue that no generation of civicminded people appeared in this era. William well, hes right that we say that there is only a threegeneration cycle in the civil war time, and we explain in the book why that is so. The cycle can be broken. Thats the one thing that our history shows us. It was possible and it did happen, and it happened in the midst of the greatest National Tragedy in American History. Professor mead at New York University told us he thinks one of the strengths of our theory is its resilience, and he cites the civil war anomaly as an example of that, in that it shows that if events go badly and if theres a tragedy of that kind of proportion that, yes, it does have a deep effect upon the way people behave in families and in communities. I would say that as we look to the future and we reflect on the possibility that someday we might have a tragedy of that proportion, i dont think its a slight on our theory to say Something Like that can cause this kind of a problem. Neil many historians have told us that if you have 18 generations and you have a cycle that seems to repeat itself perfectly with that one aberration, that the aberration actually strengthens the theory. It means that you werent simply trying to fit everything into a preconceived pattern, and it means that also our theory is not deterministic, that there are ways in which the cycle can be broken or rerouted for a time. Thats very important for people to know that were not presenting here a clockwork universe which no matter how we , try or what we do will always turn out the same. Brian the cycle is 22 years . I mean the generations. William generations average about 22 years, but they range from 17 to 33 years. We let the generations define themselves, and one of the things weve tried to do with that chart that youre looking at right now is to show the total flow of generational history in america and how their life cycles have evolved over time. Brian ive done a lot of booknotes here, and ive never seen anything quite like this. Was this hard to do in book publishing, to get a chart that literally flips out three pages worth . William actually, that was what the publisher was initially interested in. They saw our early version of that chart and they thought, my goodness, heres a brandnew way of looking at American History brian how hard was this to do . William well, we had to have an understanding of that in our minds before we could write the whole book. Brian neil it was the result of a lot of thinking, rethinking, reading, research, reconfirming some of the dividing lines between generations. Looking at prominent people, born in different years. It was really the summation of most of the research we did for the entire book. William you see, what this shows is what we call the generational diagonal. You see the same event in the civil war taking place. There are different generations and different lives. Admit thatve to used, abraham lincolns transcendental. Websteray and daniel are in a generation. About thatworry there is a lot of things . That there is a lot of language . No we did not. This is not a light read. Challenge,t of a people repay the effort they put into this. Any people told us this is a book to go back to again and again. It is also fun to read. The way we tell each generation with their life story, we start with their childhood and go to their old age, we see the continuity and personality of their mind. Changed, itde has is something that historians have not done. Homer. Nt to go back to this book is enough right here. Homer, why . D what was the purpose of that . People who had looked at the four cycles. Sociologists and historical writers of the 19th century, we discovered a view of rather obscure like Guiseppe Ferrari who was an obscure italian historian actually had described a fourpart cycle that was applicable in italian history over the centuries, going back to renaissance times. We went back and looked at important pieces of literature including the Old Testament and the odyssey and the iliad and looked at what others have said about them, and we discovered that even some of the great seminal works of literature in western civilization seemed to describe something that approaches a fourpart cycle of generations. Its interesting, for instance, in the bible they often talk about curses and sins lasting through the fourth generation. They usually dont say three and they never say five. We find that a cycle of four generations which completes a period of empirebuilding or a period of spiritual prophecy until the next prophecy or the next empirebuilder arrives is a very common pattern used, long before we ever thought about modernity and long before america was founded. Strauss and brian, theres a reason for the four generations, too, and one of the reasons that the book is as substantial 500 hundred pages long as it is, is we try to show not just what the cycle is but why it is. At the core of it is the very thing that traditional historians overlook and thats the cycle of nurture in families. We give as much importance to what happens in childhood and in the comingofage years as we do to what people do when they are in their peak of political power. When you look at the cycle of nurture you see an ebb and flow between overprotection of children, which tends to happen during times of spiritual awakening, and the overprotection of children which happens during a time of National Crisis like world war ii. Through the late 60s and 70s we had a period of underprotection, and were heading back towards a period of reprotection. We expect that, if history is a guide, reach a point of overprotection in another 20 or 25 years. What this does is it lines up with the same patterns in history that other historians have seen. About 80 or 90 years since the very beginning of the story of america weve seen great hinges in history what we call crises that reshape the public world, and roughly halfway in between we have what are commonly called by historians great awakenings where a new values regime comes in. Its happened every since the puritans first landed. Lamb let me ask you a question about that New York Times review. Weve seen lots of stories as a matter of fact. I think 60 minutes did a thing on frank rich and his impact on broadway. When he does a bad review, some of those shows close. Do you worry that the review that you had in the New York Times will affect your book that way . Strauss no, not at all. Howe i dont worry about it, no. Strauss no, because we find with this book that the word of mouth is very important. You have to read this book and you have to read it carefully to understand what our point is. Howe even among the academic community, which is obviously always a concern of ours because we do present this as a legitimate work of interest to historians, weve been gratified by the response we get among many historians who say, its about time that my profession begins to look at the big picture. Strauss some of the bigpicture books of the past 30 or 40 years have not come from universities, whether youre talking feminine mystique or megatrends or future shock. Derek bok, as a matter of fact, last year was complaining how within the disciplines of the social sciences at major universities so few paradigmatic books have emerged over the last half century. Lamb each of you go back to where this all started. Where did you get your first interest in history . Howe my interest in history probably goes back to the time i was an undergraduate in college. I was a typical boomer in that my g. I. Generation parents were all interested in the physical sciences. They were educated materialists, you might say, out exploring the stars and quantifying matter. As a typical boomer, i grew up interested in values. I grew up interested in how culture develops, how civilization improves upon itself. I think many boomers were taught as kids by their warveteran parents that we sacrificed so many of our years to build all this for you, but were leaving it up to you kids to find out where to take it to make the decisions between right and wrong, to figure out the right values. So this took me in the direction of history and looking back to find out how people in the past have figured out the difference between right and wrong, which is always an issue with the boom generation. Lamb what line of work were your parents in . Howe my father was a physicist and my uncle was an astronomer. My grandfather also was an astronomer actually. But a family of scientists, definitely, i come from. Lamb could you point to anybody in your family or in your school work that got you interested directly in history or did you do it yourself . Howe i did it myself. Again, i think, typical of my generation, i didnt follow directly the footsteps of my father. I chose a somewhat different path. Lamb are you surprised you ended up in washington, d. C. . Howe now, that does surprise me not that i became an historian but that im here. Lamb why does it surprise you . Howe its a long way away from california. I think many people out here dont realize that californians tend to stick to themselves, and they regard washington, d. C. , as threequarters of the way to europe. Lamb is it a place youll end up, do you think, or will you go back to california . Howe well, ive lived on the east coast here now for nearly 20 years. Pretty soon itll be longer than i ever lived in california, so i think ive made it my home. Lamb mr. Strauss, can you tell us where it all started with you . Strauss i felt my first real brush with history back when i was a high school junior. I was a page at the United States Supreme Court. That was the year that john kennedy was assassinated. I remember sitting in the judges chambers. I was with Justice Brennan and Justice Goldberg and Justice White when the news came. Then within the next couple of days i watched on pennsylvania avenue as the funeral procession passed by. It caused me to reflect a little bit on the fact that this was the shining knight of my own parents generation. Through the rest of the 1960s while i was at harvard the same class that exploded in riot and the strikes. Although i didnt participate in that i saw it and it saddened me i was well aware of what my peers were doing to attack the institutions of their elders. Then as i wrote the book about how the vietnam war affected my generation, i saw really quite a tragic relationship developing between what we call the g. I. Generation and the boomers. Right after that, of course, the g. I. S separated into their own culture, basically abandoning the culture for the boomers in return for a substantial reward in the form of entitlements programs and returns. It wasnt a very happy ending to the generation gap that we all remember. I think that thats how i came both to the question of generations and to a way of looking at American History a little bit differently starting in families and looking at people moving through time. Lamb how did you get to the Supreme Court page job in the first place . Strauss well, that was the result of the hard work of my g. I. Parents, especially my mother who was very typical of the leave it to beaver kind of household that we saw in the 1950s a mother who couldnt do enough for her children. It was also typical of the kindnesses that people showed towards children back in those days. I certainly felt as i was growing up that the schooling that people my age received was the most important task that our community had, and i daresay in the decades since then, children havent had that same attitude. Lamb what did your parents do for a living . Strauss well, my father received his greatest pleasure and triumph in world war ii, like many people in his generation. My mother, like many women of her generation, only was able to discover relatively late in life her abilities in the public world, and since then shes become a masterful expert in Public Relations out in San Francisco and shes still working hard. Lamb all right. How did you do this book . How did you physically write 500 pages and split up the work . Howe well, it was a problem with logistics, also a problem with the calendar. Bill and i often joke about how were on completely different sleepwake cycles. Since hes a performer in the evening and since i get up very early in the morning, our days overlap for about four hours. But we worked with faxes, constant car transportation, on the phone daily, which is quite something when you have a project that goes on over a number of years. Strauss we were breaking new ground in a lot of areas. We have about 60 pages of very smalltype footnotes in the back, and we felt that we wanted to give other people a chance to carry on with this kind of work. There are many generations like the g. I. Generation of Senior Citizens. Nobody has ever written a biography about this generation before. Its remarkable when you consider their own strong connection to history. There have been dozens of biographies of boomers, and a few of the silent, but none of the g. I. S and none of the 13th generation. We had to sort through all of American History, and we found only the very, very isolated example of someone who had taken a peer group from birth and followed them all the way through old age. Lamb let me go back, though, to the basics. How did you do it . In other words, how did you split it up . Strauss well, to write the history of abraham lincolns generation, for example, you had to find a history of childhood and see what was going on around 1810s. 0s and you had to find a history of youth or religion or great spiritual and abolitionist movements to find out what young people were doing in the 1830s. You had to look at histories of the family to find out what people were doing in forming families around the 1830s and 1840s. Then youd look at a traditional history book to find out what they were doing at the peak of power. And then you would look at histories of old age to find out how they were treated when old. We had to take all of those pieces and write a completely separate story. Howe to come back to this whole question of reconstructing history along what we call the generational diagonal following the same group through time you know, you can read a lot of books, and some of them very fine books, written about the history of childhood. Theyll describe the street urchins of the 1890s, and then suddenly a couple of chapters later youll get the boy scouts of the 1920s. But, of course, these arent the same people. These are different people. What we had to do was take the histories of childhood, the histories of adolescence, of marriage, of old age and refit the pieces together so that theyre talking about the same people over time. This is really at the core of what the whole purpose of this lamb again, though, did you book is about. Write one chapter and bill write another . Strauss we really both worked on the whole book. We really did. Some of us would write first drafts of different chapters. I guess you could say i wrote more of the first drafts of the 19th and 20th century generations and neil of the 17th and 18th generations. But we both worked on all of it. Howe by the time we got to the end i dont think youll notice any stylistic gaps as you read through it. Lamb did you ever disagree on anything . Strauss not very much. We worked it out. Well, there was a kind of a Creative Process in which we each would come across something new and we always had to test it against our idea of the theory, and our own idea of the theory, of course, evolved over time as we saw what was actually happening out there. We divide the book into really three parts one part to explain what the generation is, why its important and how it connects with people in their daily lives. A second section and its the longest section in which we tell the entire story of america as a biography of 18 generations. Howe and we divide each of these generations up into phases of life. We have a little section on their youth, coming of age, rising adult, midlife, and we deal with history always from the prism of this lifecycle framework. Strauss and its important to say we spend as much time on their childhood as we spend on how they behaved as president s. Lamb bill strauss, you said that you started seven years ago, and, neil, you joined him five years ago. When did you actually start writing this book and when did you finish it . Strauss well, we had to spend years doing research for it and collecting clippings about the modern generations and doing a tremendous amount of reading. We probably had to consult howe our houses are still littered with hundreds of photocopies of articles, copies of books, binders filled with material because, again, piecing this together along this diagonal was arduous work. It required going through many books just to work out one point of history. Lamb did you computerize all of this . Strauss oh, of course. This book could not have been written longhand, i assure you. Lamb is there something that the computer made available today to be able to do this that you wouldnt have been able to do this 30 years ago . Strauss well, theres one very important thing the computer made available, and thats what we have in the appendix. This is something thats very new data. Its part of our second appendix where we show the generational makeup of the National Leadership by year. There are some startling things that you discover in that. For example, if you go to the next page, youll find the largest generational landslide in American History happened in the years immediately following the civil war when the transcendental generation, which held the largest generational plurality ever seen 90 percent of all the members of congress and senators and governors were transcendental at the outbreak of the civil war in 1869 there was a 19point swing from abraham lincolns generation to ulysses grants, the biggest ever seen, and it showed the exhaustion that American Society faced. Howe basically voters were throwing out the older reformers who had brought such tragedy to the country and putting in the younger pragmatists. Strauss then when we look at more modern generations, we can see in our own time that the gray 89th congress what sometimes is called the grandfather of entitlements programs was right when the g. I. S were at the peak of their power. Seventyfive percent, approximately, of the members of congress and senate and the state houses were g. I. S, and they used that power enormously to enact the Great Society agenda. The silent emerged into power right around the time of watergate and the ford and carter years, right around the time the country was beginning to feel that it was spinning its wheels and unable to solve problems. When you look at the boom generation, you can see that were still at only 21 percent but were at approximately the same phase of life as Franklin Roosevelts missionary generation was around 1910, and over the decade that followed they swept into office and with it they brought a very stern new morals regime to the country. Thats one of the things that we predict will happen in the 1990s. Lamb you talked about sen. Gore earlier. He saw the book, he read it, he gave you a tremendous boost here on the flap. Lets say hes thinking about running for president , and he picks up your book and looks at it. What does it tell him . Hes a boomer . Howe he is a boomer, yes. Lamb what does it tell him about his possibility of being elected president . Strauss well, so far the silent generation has not done a very good job of electing president s, and we may very well go from a g. I. To a boom. Whether its democratic or republican, i dont know. Lamb i guess im in the silent generation. Strauss if youre between 48 and 65 you are in the silent generation. Lamb i am. Im 49. Strauss you came of age just too late to participate as a hero in world war ii and just too early to feel the heat of the vietnam draft. Lamb again go back to sen. Gore because i assume there are a number of boomers that are out there. We dont have to use him necessarily by name, but sen. Kerry howe i think what its going to tell people of the boom generation who are in politics or interested in entering politics incidentally, one of our predictions is in the 1990s we are going to see a lot of boomers coming into politics from other professions, other walks of life. The longtime incumbent politician that is very characteristic of the silent generation may become a fading artifact, and we may begin to have a swifter turnover in congressional seats. But what its going to say is that his peers, who are going to begin to dominate the electorate in terms of voting clout, are going to take a sterner, more valuesoriented approach to the problems of the country. Everyone is already talking about the 1990s as the decade of austerity, the decade of savings, the decade when we have to sort of pay back for some of the sins weve made in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of this is boomerdriven, we think. We think this is characteristic of this type of generation area. E one of the targets both intentionally and accidentally of the morals campaign, you might say, of the boomers will be younger people to clean up the world or to rectify the mistakes of youth. And, of course, this is part of what we talk about in creating this new, safer, more protected nurtureoftheyoung millennial generation. Strauss the boomers tend to look upon thirteeners as an army of aging Bart Simpsons the brat pack, the kids who are a little too wild, not well educated and dont have that much to offer. The kids who are now in their 20s, the thirteeners, resent this as they try to find their own way in a world that they perceive as very difficult for them. Howe as a matter of fact, sen. Gores wife, tipper gore, is actively involved in the movement to an extent to clean up some of the lyrics and some of whats going on in the youth culture. Boomers feel very strongly about that because they felt to an extent they were burned by that, and they feel the damage it can do to children in a way that the silent generation, who has been running our culture since the early 70s, never felt that damage because, of course, they had an extremely conformist almost a smothering childhood, and they have no firsthand experience of what the danger of underprotection can do to children. Strauss what we think that politicians or marketers in particular product salesmen who are concerned about how to reach generations should think about as they read our book and try to decide how to either get elected or launch a new product line is look real hard at the section of our book that will certainly be the most controversial with historians, and that is we have a whole section on the future, a 50page chapter, on what we say the cycle tells us about what the future will be. Lamb this is chapter 13 . Strauss its chapter 13 and we call it completing the millennial cycle, and what we do is not try to predict specific events, but rather how the National Mood will shift and how each of todays generations will behave as they grow a little bit older. In the past what people have done is tended to assume that there wont be any change in the way older people will behave or that 25yearolds will still be like 25yearolds used to be. That has not happened in the past couple of decade. Its never happened in American History. Today, for example, if you were to reflect on each phase of life, its completely different from what it was back in the 1960s. Our elders are busy and active and happy. People in midlife are sensitive, compassionate, caring, concerned about cultural pluralism. The people in their 30s, the boomers, are selfimmersed and uninclined to follow the directions set by other people, very much unlike the silent. In the next 20 years or so, youre going to see changes just as romantic. Lamb whats your Biggest Surprise as you go around and do these shows . What questions are you asked that you dont expect, or what are the ones youre asked the most often . Strauss well, one thing that weve noticed as weve talked to people is the different response that people give us based upon what their generation is. We find, for example, that g. I. S, todays seniors, are very historyabsorbed and they are quite concerned about their place in history, and so theyre interested in this. They also have noticed that no one has ever written a biography of their generation before, and theyre interested in what we have to say. Lamb again, g. I. S are what age . Strauss theyre 66 on up. Howe born between 1901 and 1924. Just to add to that, the way we tell the story of the g. I. Generation is we explain what they became as adults and in the 1950s and 60s by looking at how elders saw them as children, ow special and good and deserving they saw them as children. A lot of g. I. S today understand that. Thats a story that makes sense to them. Strauss we also try to show the g. I. S and something that they really are drawn to that todays little millennial children so far look like a generation much like their own and, most importantly, that the boomer yuppies that so many Seniors Today find distasteful those cultural perfectionists we all know about are very, very similar in personality to the g. I. S own parents, the missionary generation of from oakland franklin roosevelt. The problem was, you see, the g. I. S never knew them when they were young adults. Lamb im in the silent generation so what kind of questions have i asked you that would fit my generation . Strauss well, the silent generation come much harder to the notion that there is such a thing as a generation because silent people tend not to perceive of themselves as much as being part of a bona fide generation. They look at the powerful g. I. S just older and the selfabsorbed boomers younger, and theyre more inclined to say, well, everybodys people and were all diverse and we have to be concerned about all these different cultures and fragments of history. Howe we also find just in general among the silent generation a strong impulse towards making things complex. They dont like labels, they dont like generalizations. This is part of their wholelife mission, to take a culture that was so simple and to break it up to show how people are different, to show how people each have their own tendencies, their own desires and basically to bring out the variety in humanity. This is whats made the silents so effective in dealing with people. Lamb ive got to ask bill strauss. As the leader of the Capitol Steps, when you go in to entertain a group, based on this book and your knowledge of history, can you tell in advance, depending on what age the audience is going to be, what their reaction is going to be . Strauss to some degree i can, yes. I think all of todays generations have an appreciation for humor. The spin is a little bit different. I will say one thing the silent generation has produced the greatestever american comedians. If you trace from the little rascals through Shirley Temple to jerry lewis, stan freberg, tom lhear, all the way up to mark russell and many of the other comedians of today, theyre born very nearly at the lamb but whats your favorite same time. Lamb but whats your favorite audience, though . I know its hard to label. Strauss theyre all good, brian. You do have to have a sense of who your audience is, but as long as you have that sense and you know what theyre looking for, theyre all good. Lamb neil, last question again any other questions that youre surprised about being asked as you go out and talk about your book on the circuit . Howe i think what bill was talking about the generational division among our response is often strauss the boomers in particular. The boomers understand what a bona fide generation is, and they also are looking for simplifying visions, very much unlike the silent. They know that theyre moving somewhere beyond hippie and yuppie. They also are intrigued by the idea that they are not the first generation of hippies and yuppies. You can look back at abraham lincolns transcendentals or Franklin Roosevelts missionaries and you see much the same life back. And theyre intrigued by the notion that when theyre old, theyll become what we call gray champions. Lamb times up. William strauss and neil howe, coauthors of this book the history of americas future, 15842069. Generations is the name of the thank you both for joining us. Book. Howe thank you. Here on the countrys best known history writers from the decade. Every saturday. You can watch any of our programs at any time visit our website on cspan. Org history. Americanatching history tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Tonight on lectures of pankhurstenjamin teaches a class on stereotypes of americans living in appalachia. Here is a preview. Far from the ruthless inbred have anthe mountaineers easy unaffected bearing. Sharp had a reason to see these people and a positive light. Although he shared with their detractors a place of inherent backwardness. He observed that they possessed much of the character and culture of pastoral ideals. His efforts to document their culture was part of a project to revive an interest in english folk tradition. They could rekindle the dignity and self worth of their ancestors, what he observed amongst the people. Watch the entire program at 8 00 p. M. Or midnight eastern on lectures of history. Only on cspan3. Sunday night on q a, a. Onversation with thomas sold fortunately on todays left, i never felt that i had to avoid what people thought with different views. Everythingon i read on the political spectrum. Back when i was an undergraduate i have treasured that book, i could tell even then i understood that there are reasons that people hold of you stable today. Just a question of being on the forces of good and evil. I have some very good people in the administrations that have had the only question is about the president will listen to them. They will know a lot more time has passed. Sunday night on q a. This years he spent during countries across the country exploit American History. Next they look at our recent visit to north carolina. You are watching American History tv. All weekend every weekend on cspan3. The cape fear region is the southernmost Coastal Region of north carolina. Becauselled cape fear when both were approaching it was very difficult to get i