My Generation: Fifty Years of Sex, Drugs, Rock, Revolution, Glamour, Greed, Valor, Faith and Silcon Chips Book

Far from being stuck in the 1960s, a decade when half its members were still children, the Baby Boom has not only continually transformed itself but has also brought epic change in society. My Generation is the collective biography of the millions of Americans born between Pearl Harbor Day in 1941 and the 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Here are nineteen quintessential boomers, ranging from the admired to the notorious, from the expected—a Vietnam War hero, an antiwar activist, an LSD chemist, an author of the Macintosh computer graphic user interface, a spiritual celebrity—to the less-so—a Jesus freak turned Queer Theorist, an ultraconservative congressman, a billionaire builder, a hip-hop impresario, and the Studio 54-bred AIDS activist who inspired Broadway's Rent. Through their stories and his own, Michael Gross takes us on the wild ride from Yasgur's Farm to Silicon Valley and into the twenty-first century.

My Generation puts the tumultous history of the baby boomers in context and makes sense out of the storm. The compelling narrative brings to life all the defining moments—the civil rights, antiwar, and identity struggles, the highs and lows of drugs and the sexual revolution, retreat and rentrenchment, the rediscovery of faith, the rise of conservatism. The book ends with the cyber revolution, the Boom's best expression of itself, and the reign of First boomers, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who, a surprising number of their age peers think, represent them at their very worst.

For half a century, for good and ill, baby boomers have been the most powerful generation in the most powerful nation on earth.This remarkable book is a chronicle of its conflicts and its achievements, the unprecedented changes it caused, the brilliant hopes of its early days, the awful traumas of its adolescence, and how it has struggled ever since to make good on its unfulfilled promise.

Author Biography:

Michael Gross is recognized by friends and foes alike as one of America's leading magazine journalists. "Much feared for his razor-like observations, Michael Gross is no stranger to sensational investigative reportage," says nationally syndicated columnist Liz Smith. "Gross turns into an old softie when confronted with the beauty, terror, passion and pity of a serious true tale. And when he is inspired by his subject, Gross can be as evocative as Proust."

Gross is a Contributing Writer at Talk Magazine and a Contributing Editor of Travel & Leisure. He was previously a Contributing Editor of New York magazine and a Senior Editor at George magazine. His most recent book, My Generation, was published in March 2000. It has been optioned for development as a mini-series by Gene Simmons, co-founder of Kiss, for his new production company. Also a selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club, it will be published in trade paperback in May 2001. Gross is currently at work on his next book, a biography of fashion icon Ralph Lauren.