Category Archives: Baby Boomers

Great Expectations: America & the Baby Boom Generation

(Coward McCann, New York, 1980)

Great-Expectations-coverGreat Expectations is the story of 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, a baby boom so extraordinary that it has affected every aspect of our society, from fads, fashions and music, to education, crime rates, and Social Security. This book coined the phrase “baby boomer” and in 1981 was a finalist for the American Book Award for Nonfiction.  Continue reading →

The Hickel Heckling, from the PAW Archives, originally published April 28, 1970

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/paw-archives-hickel-heckling

Shortly after 8:30 on Thursday evening, March 5, 1970, Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel rose to his feet and began to address a crowd of nearly 2,000 persons assembled in Jadwin Gymnasium. At the same time, a group of about 75 young men and women sitting in the upper balcony of the gym began to chant, jeer, and shout insults at the speaker.

Pausing only to catch his breath and quickly glance up at the protesters, Secretary Hickel continued to read off his text. The chanting mounted in volume: “Talk about the War! Talk about the War!” And, “Talk about the oil! Talk about the oil!” Several young people, wearing buckskin fringes and headbands with red smears on their foreheads, began to shout out Indian-style war whoops. President Robert Goheen, the only other person sitting on the speaker’s platform, stared silently up at the disrupters, his hands tightening on the arms of his chair ….