As 2004 came to a close, the youngest of the Baby Boomers had reached their 40th birthday and the upper end of the baby boom had almost celebrated their 60th. Four decades ago, Associated Press wrote a series of articles calling 1964 "the year of the kid." Soon after, Time magazine named the under-25 generation as its "Man of the Year," noting it was a new kind of generation that has been cushioned by unprecedented affluence and raised in a period of prolonged peace.

The electrifying changes that have happened during the lives of the Boomer generation have been are truly mind boggling. By the mid 1980's, for example, the Boomers were responsible for half of all U.S. personal income and they produced a boom in the housing market that would continue for the next two decades. With all that money, and with houses to fill, the consumer boomers had to have somewhere to spend their money: between 1983 and 1988 Boomers purchased 62 million microwave ovens, 57 million washers and dryers, 105 million color television sets, 46 million refrigerators and freezers, 63 million VCRs, and 31 million cordless phones.

Steve Gillon is one of the leading authorities helping us understand the trends and events that shaped the lives of those in the population explosion that occurred between 1946 and 1964 and which happened to be the largest demographic spike in history. Gillon is the resident historian on the History Channel on U.S. cable TV, has taught at both Yale and Oxford University, and is now a history professor at University of Oklahoma. In Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation Ever and How it Changed America, Gillon’s richly detailed analysis is presented in his unique style, which is equal parts smooth-talking story teller and frank and open school teacher.

Gillon’s book is not just a listing of facts and figures, however. He has skillfully woven the biographical details of the lives of six Boomers – representing rich and poor, black and white, urban and suburban – around meaningful trends that reflect changes in religious beliefs, women’s rights and politics. As a result, the massive story of the whole Boomer generation that Gillon tells has a very personal feel. By interviewing the six subjects and many of their family and friends, he helps us to understand what they were feeling and thinking while in high school, university or while dropping out, and overlaps those private details with the anti-Viet Nam war protests, the escalating drug culture, the expanding television schedule, and the hippie movement. Although each of their lives takes different paths, they are all shaped by the same events and trends.

One of those in this book is Marshall Herskovitz, a Boomer born in 1952, whose family would have been one of the 19 million to purchase television sets between 1948 and 1952. Young Marshall’s observations on television and turbulent times inspired Herskovitz to write innovative television shows such as My So Called Life, Once and Again, and thirtysomething. Another of the Boomers featured here is Donny Duetsch, whose restless nature ultimately gave him the motivation to transform his father’s boutique ad agency into one of the most influential and creative agencies in the world.

As children, Boomers changed North America into a nation of schools, suburbs and station wagons. It is the way those details are presented here that make this book such a pleasure to read, and read repeatedly. Steve Gillon has very capably shown us how Boomer culture became the culture that controls North America, and the Boomers are a generation where even the youngest have come of age.

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Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High. He regularly writes reviews of books about mass media and popular culture for the Saint John Telegraph Journal.