1. The information on this page has been adapted with permission from William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991). For their term for this generation--"G. I. Generation"--I have substituted the term Greatest Generation, borrowing from the title of NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw's book about them: The Greatest Generation (New York: Dell, 2001). A good many of the members of this generation were never G.I.'s. For more information on historical generations and how generational theory can help predict the future, see Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (New York: Broadway Books [Bantam-Doubleday-Dell], 1997) and visit Strauss and Howe's fourthturning.com and lifecourse.com sites. [Back to your place.]

2. Strauss and Howe (1991), p. 74; Strauss and Howe (1997), p. 135. [Back to your place.]

3. Strauss and Howe (1991), p. 261, citing Marshall, who was cited by Ronald Reagan, speech to Republican National Convention (September 15, 1988). [Back to your place.]

4. Ibid., citing U.S. News and World Report, cited in Michael L. Smith, "Selling the Moon," in Richard Wrightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (eds.), The Culture of Consumption (1983); Hoffer, in ibid. [Back to your place.]

5. Ibid., p. 266. [Back to your place.]

6. Ibid., p. 261, citing Kennedy's inaugural address (January 20, 1961). [Back to your place.]

7. Ibid., pp. 261-63, citing Lola Irelan, "Retirement History Study: Introduction," Social Security Bulletin (November 1972); Cain (1987). [Back to your place.]

8. Ibid., p. 263. [Back to your place.]

9. Ibid., citing "Reston, Retiring at 80 . . . ," The New York Times (November 5, 1989); Henry Malcolm, Generation of Narcissus (1971), p. 43. [Back to your place.]

10. Ibid. The Superman cartoonists were Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, both Greatest. [Back to your place.]

11. Ibid., citing Kennedy (1961). [Back to your place.]

12. Ibid., citing Rand, "Apollo 11," in Leonard Peikoff (ed.), Voices of Reason (1988). [Back to your place.]

13. Ibid., pp. 263-64, citing Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (1960); Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971); Skinner, Walden Two (1948). [Back to your place.]

14. Ibid., p. 264, citing Singer, in "Isaac Singer's Perspective on God and Man," The New York Times (October 23, 1968); Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953). [Back to your place.]

15. Ibid., citing Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (1942). [Back to your place.]

16. Ibid., citing Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963); Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farnham, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (1947); Lynn White, Jr., Educating Our Daughters (1950); Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (1980), p. 440; William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 (1974), p. 492. [Back to your place.]

17. Ibid., citing Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (1956). [Back to your place.]

18. Ibid., pp. 264-65, citing Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (1977), ch. 3. [Back to your place.]

19. Ibid., p. 265, citing Roosevelt, radio message to the Young Democratic Clubs of America (1935), in E. Taylor Parks and Lois F. Parks (eds.), Memorable Quotations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1965), p. 41. [Back to your place.]

20. Ibid., citing Malvina Reynolds, in Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs (1964). [Back to your place.]

21. Ibid., citing Joseph Goulden, The Best Years: 1945-1950 (1976), p. 427; Bush, in biographic film, televised (August 17, 198) during the Republican National Convention. [Back to your place.]

22. Ibid., p. 266, citing U.S. Executive Office of the President, Economic Report of the President (1990), tables C-1, C-79. [Back to your place.]

23. Ibid., pp. 265-66, citing Bell, in Everett Ladd, "205 and Going Strong," Public Opinion (June-July 1981); Reagan, 1985 State of the Union Message. [Back to your place.]

24. Ibid., p. 266, citing Eda LeShan, The Wonderful Crisis of Middle Age (1973), p. 21. [Back to your place.]

25. Ibid., citing Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive (song, 1944); Teller, in "Star Wars . . . ," The New York Times (February 13, 1990). [Back to your place.]

26. Ibid., p. 269, citing Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (1904); Harvey A. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (1988), chs. 8-10; Joseph Hawes and Ray Hiner, Growing Up in America: Children in Historical Perspective (1985), p. 285. [Back to your place.]

27. Ibid., p. 267, citing Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (1975), series B-182 to B-184, B-202 to B-205; Levenstein (1988), ch. 10. [Back to your place.]

28. Ibid., pp. 266-67, citing Degler (1980), p. 70; Leonard Cain, "Age Status and Generational Phenomena," Gerentologist (September 6, 1987); Bureau of the Census (1975), series D-31, D-80; Winona Morgan, The Family Meets the Depression (1939), pp. 82-83, 35. [Back to your place.]

29. Ibid., pp. 269-70, citing Eleanor Porter, Pollyanna (1913); Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie (cartoon strip, from 1924); Literary Digest, cited in Fass (1977), p. 37; David MacLeod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMBA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 (1983); David MacLeod, "Act Your Age: Boyhood, Adolescence, and the Rise of the Boy Scouts of America," in Harvey J. Graff (ed.), Growing Up in America (1987). [Back to your place.]

30. Ibid., p. 267. [Back to your place.]

31. Ibid., p. 270, citing Edward Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920 (1964). [Back to your place.]

32. Ibid., p. 267, citing Cain (1987), p. 85; Fass (1977), pp. 123-26, 45-46, 137-38; Christian Gauss, "Education," in Harold Stearns (ed.), America Now (1938); Bureau of the Census (1975), series H-433, H-707, H-755; John Folger and Charles Nam, Education of the American Population, Census Monograph (1960), chs. 1-2, 4-5; William O'Neill, The American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960 (1986), p. 35; James MacGregor Burns, The Workshop of Democracy (1986), p. 514. [Back to your place.]

33. Ibid., p. 270, citing Rodgers, in Hawes and Hiner (1985), p. 130; Bush, in Nicholas King, George Bush: A Biography (1980), p. 14. [Back to your place.]

34. Ibid., citing Cornell Sun article (1920), cited in Fass (1977), p. 248, ch. 4; Joan Crawford, in Robert Sklar (ed.), The Plastic Age (1917-1930) (1970), p. 49. [Back to your place.]

35. Ibid., citing Krutch, in Calvin B. T. Lee, The Campus Scene: 1900-1970 (1970), p. 70; Cowley, Exile's Return (1951 ed.), p. 294. [Back to your place.]

36. Ibid., citing Shuford, in Lee (1970), p. 36; Harper's, cited in ibid., p. 48, and in Anthony Orum (ed.), The Seeds of Politics: Youth and Politics in America (1972), p. 25. [Back to your place.]

37. Ibid., pp. 267, 270-71. [Back to your place.]

38. Ibid., p. 271, citing Manchester (1974), p. 83, 89. [Back to your place.]

39. Ibid., citing Orum (1972), p. 39. [Back to your place.]

40. Ibid. [Back to your place.]

41. Ibid., p. 267, citing Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, and James Trussel, "Exploring the Uses of Data on Height," Social Sciences History (Fall 1982); John Kieren, "Sports," in Stearns (1938). [Back to your place.]

42. Ibid., p. 271, citing Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (1984), p. 172; Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath (1939); Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (film, 1983); Pegler, in Allen (1939), p. 232; Lewis, It Can't Happen Here (1939). [Back to your place.]

43. Ibid., pp. 267, 271, citing From Here to Eternity (film, 1953). [Back to your place.]

44. Ibid., pp. 271-72, citing Yank editor, in Manchester (1974), p. 355; Mary Martin, My Heart Belongs to Daddy (song, 1937); Bing Crosby, in Holiday Inn (film, 1942; later remade into White Christmas, 1954). [Back to your place.]

45. Ibid., p. 272, citing Mead, in Huston Smith (ed.), The Search for America (1959), pp. 116-17. [Back to your place.]

46. Ibid., citing The Best Years of Our Lives (film, 1946). [Back to your place.]

47. Ibid., p. 268, citing "Opinion Roundup," Public Opinion (November-December 1986); Ben Wattenberg, The Real America: A Surprising Examination of the State of the Union (1974), p. 347; O'Neill (1986), pp. 12-20. [Back to your place.]

48. Ibid., p. 272, citing American Institute of Public Opinion, Gallup Poll (1972), poll of May 28, 1945, on poison gas, of October 19, 1945, on Japan, on November 19, 1954, on corporal punishment; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (film, 1939). [Back to your place.]

49. Ibid., pp. 267-68, citing Warren Miller, American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952-1978 (1980); Norman H. Nie et al., The Changing American Voter (1976), pp. 85-87; Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (1960), p. 148; Michael Nelson (ed.), The Elections of 1984 (1985), p. 99; Burns (1986), p. 514; various surveys published in Public Opinion through the 1980s; John Morsell, in Lipset (1960), p. 281. [Back to your place.]

50. Ibid., p. 272. [Back to your place.]

51. Ibid., p. 273, citing William Whyte, Organization Man (1956); Sloane Wilson, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955). [Back to your place.]

52. Ibid., citing C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1959); Daniel Bell, End to Ideology (1960). [Back to your place.]

53. Ibid., citing John Kenneth Galbraith (1958); Lipset (1960), p. 448. [Back to your place.]

54. Ibid., citing Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (1960); Eric Sevareid, This Is Eric Sevareid (1964), p. 12; Kennedy, in Manchester (1974), p. 491; Bell, in Ladd (1981). [Back to your place.]

55. Ibid., pp. 273-74, citing Frost, speech at Kennedy inaugural (January 20, 1961), cited in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1969), pp. 38, 43, 213. [Back to your place.]

56. Ibid., p. 274, citing Richard Rovere, The Establishment (1962); Johnson, Democratic Party nomination speech (August 1964). [Back to your place.]

57. Ibid., pp. 268, 274, citing Theodore White, America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956-1980 (1982), p. 125. [Back to your place.]

58. Ibid., p. 274, citing "America's Mood Today," Look (June 29, 1965); Richard Nixon, Six Crises (1962), p. xvi; Rusk, in Stewart Alsop, The Center: People and Power in Political Washington (1968), p. 120; McNamara, in ibid., p. 150. [Back to your place.]

59. Ibid., citing Burns, Wald, and Gardner, in Ben Wattenberg (ed.), The Real America (1974), pp. 15, 18, 22; Nixon, in address to the nation on the situation in Southeast Asia (April 30, 1970); Mayer, in "Children's Crusade: A Search for Light," Los Angeles Times (November 16, 1969). [Back to your place.]

60. Ibid., p. 275, citing Lost Horizon (film, 1937); American Institute of Public Opinion (1972), poll of June 21, 1947. [Back to your place.]

61. Ibid., citing Robert E. Wood of Modern Maturity, in "When Ads Don't Fit the Image," Newsweek (January 22, 1990). [Back to your place.]

62. Ibid., p. 269, citing "Opinion Roundup," Public Opinion (February-March 1985); polls cited in Samuel Preston, "Children and the Elderly: Divergent Paths for America's Dependents," Demography (November 1984); "Elderly Belie Old Stereotypes," Washington Post (March 9, 1986); "The Graying of the Class of '40," Washington Post (April 25, 1990). [Back to your place.]

63. Ibid., p. 267, citing Social Security Administration, Social Security Area Population Projections, 1989 (1990), table 10. [Back to your place.]

64. Ibid., p. 275, citing Martha Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security (1979), chs. 17-18; Michael Boskin (ed.), The Crisis in Social Security (1977); Peter G. Peterson and Neil Howe, On Borrowed Time (1988), chs. 6-7. [Back to your place.]

65. Ibid., p. 268, citing Beatrice Gross and Sylvia Seidman (eds.), The New Old: Struggling for a Decent Aging (1978), p. 147; Peterson and Howe (1988), pp. 20, 72; "Gray Power," Time (January 4, 1988); "AARP Flexes Its Muscles," Washington Post (April 18, 1988); "Old Money, New Power," The New York Times (October 23, 1988). [Back to your place.]

66. Ibid., pp. 275-76, citing AARP membership appeal, from a mailing received by Strauss and Howe (on September 6, 1988). [Back to your place.]

67. Ibid., p. 268, citing U.S. House of Representatives, Retirement Income for an Aging Population, Committee on Ways and Means (August 25, 1987), part II, chs. 5, 10; Preston (1984); Peterson and Howe (1988), chs. 2, 5; "Economic Status of the Elderly," in U.S. Executive Office of the President, Economic Report of the President (1985), ch. 5; American Council of Life Insurance, Datatrack No. 16: Household Income and Wealth (December 1986); Martha Riche, "Big Spenders," American Demographics (April 1986); Greg Duncan et al., "The Changing Fortunes of Young and Old," American Demographics (August 1986); Blayne Cutler, "Mature Audiences Only" and Charles Longino and William Crown, "The Migration of Old Money," American Demographics (October 1989); Leslie Lenkowsky, "Why Growing Old Is Growing Better," Public Opinion (May-June 1987); "Greener Era for Gray America," Insight (March 12, 1987); "The Booming Business of Aging," Washington Post (April 22, 1988). [Back to your place.]

68. Ibid., p. 269, citing U.S. House of Representatives, Overview of Entitlement Programs, 1990 Green Book, Committee on Ways and Means (June 5, 1990), pp. 1058-68; Peterson and Howe (1988), pp. 154, 108-09; Michael Boskin, Too Many Promises: The Uncertain Future of Social Security (1986), ch. 4. [Back to your place.]

69. Ibid., p. 276. [Back to your place.]

70. Ibid., citing Ken Dychtwald and Joe Flower, Age Wave: The Challenges and Opportunities of an Aging America (1989), pp. 134-35; Sun City resident, in ibid., p. 135. [Back to your place.]

71. Ibid., citing Dychtwald and Flower (1989), pp. 255-56. [Back to your place.]

72. Ibid., citing Dychtwald and Flower (1989), p. 254; "The Baby Boomers Turn 40," Time (May 19, 1986). [Back to your place.]

73. Ibid., citing Gross and Seidman (1978), pp. 102-09; LeShan (1973), p. 279; Apple, in David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old: An Exchange (1977), p. 156. [Back to your place.]

74. Ibid., citing Joan Erikson, in "Erikson, in His Own Old Age, Expands His View of Life," The New York Times (June 14, 1988); Richard Harwood, "Boomers in the Newsroom," Washington Post (July 30, 1989). [Back to your place.]

75. Ibid., p. 277, citing Lautenberg, in "With Saudi Oil Fields Secured, Bush Now Needs to Define Long-Term U.S. Objectives in the Gulf," Wall Street Journal (August 30, 1990); Dychtwald, in "Today's Grandparents Get Fed Up with Baby-Sitting," San Francisco Chronicle (August 23, 1990). [Back to your place.]

76. Ibid., pp. 384-89. This entire page cites material from Richard Easterlin, Birth and Fortune (1980); Peterson and Howe (1988), especially ch. 2; Americans for Generational Equity, The Generational Journal (1988-89, various editions); Congressional Budget Office, Trends in Family Income: 1970-1986 (1988); Jerry Gerber et al., Lifetrends: The Future of Baby Boomers and Other Aging Americans (1989); American Council of Life Insurance, Datatrack and Trend Analysis Program reports (1982-87, various editions); U.S. Executive Office of the President, Economic Report of the President or the National Income and Product Account Statistics, published in U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business (annual). [Back to your place.]

77. Ibid., p. 387 (explained on p. 368), citing a letter (September 6, 1789) from Jefferson in Paris to James Madison in New York; see "The Earth Belongs in Usufruct to the Living," in Julian P. Boyd (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 15 (1958), pp. 384-99. Around the time of the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the absorption of state debts into a single national debt, Jefferson had argued that since each generation is "as an independent nation," it is thereby entitled to disclaim any debts from the past (and, presumably, any promises to the future). James Madison and Alexander Hamilton believed otherwise, and their view prevailed. Indeed, their view has always prevailed. [Back to your place.]

78. Ibid., p. 388. In 1722, as a boy of 16, Benjamin Franklin helped his elder brother James lampoon Cotton Mather by writing several famous essays under the sarcastic pseudonym "Silence Do-Good." In 1784, at the age of 78, Franklin expressed his sincere appreciation of Cotton Mather's efforts as a "doer of good" in a kind letter to a fellow elderly Awakener--Cotton's own son Samuel; the letter is cited in Cedric B. Cowing, The Great Awakening and the American Revolution: Colonial Thought in the 18th Century (1971), p. 126. [Back to your place.]

79. Ibid., p. 277, citing Bush, inaugural address (January 20, 1989). [Back to your place.]

80. Ibid., p. 268. [Back to your place.]

81. Ibid., p. 277. The "Gross National Product" concept was first defined by Simon Kuznets in 1946. [Back to your place.]

82. Ibid., p. 278, citing It's a Wonderful Life (film directed by Frank Capra, 1946). [Back to your place.]

83. Ibid., citing Cocoon (film directed by Ron Howard, 1985); Pryor, "Goodbye to Our Century," Modern Maturity (January 1989). [Back to your place.]