Overview

An incisive, and often humorous, takedown of the Worst Generation by one the sharpest young thinkers on the right. For the first time in American history, a generation is worse off than their parents. With their overthrow of tradition and authority, the Baby Boomers claim to have been humanity's greatest liberators, but their children would happily trade that so-called liberation for a little less debt, the chance to own a home before fifty, and a shot at extracting some commitment from the bosses and romantic partners who view their relationships as temporary.In this book, millennial journalist Helen Andrews calls the Boomers to account. With wit and conviction, she presents profiles of luminaries who promised much but failed to deliver, including Camille Paglia, Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs, and Sonia Sotomayor. In covering the mighty works of these titans, Andrews reveals how their lives and their generational idiosyncrasies have secretly deformed--in plain sight--our society and our successive generations.Inspired in part by Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, Andrews is set to join the line of the modern moral critics of culture, from Rebecca West and Molly Ivins to Tom Wolfe, and on to Mark Greif and Roxane Gay today. A forthright intellectual, she happily slashes her way through the rot and cant of the boomer generation. The result is a fascinating, hilarious, and thrilling trip.

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Reviews

“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

Author Information

Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative. Previously, she was the managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine and a 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, First Things, Claremont Review of Books, The Hedgehog Review, American Affairs, and National Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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