Those folks are out there, though sometimes you have to leave Manhattan or California to find them. This is what bogs down so much of what passes for analysis of the boomers. So it is here. Simmons, the rap entrepreneur, is the sole person of color profiled. The rest of the voices are weighted toward people hailing from the coasts.
Flyover country gets short shrift.
Gross gets kudos for looking beyond the 1960s in writing about the arc of boomer lives. He spends time in Silicon Valley, and some of his best passages chronicle the birth of computer technology. Finally, we're at the point when we must translate experience into wisdom. And it's likely we will, if only because most of all, we intend to keep history's stage as long as we can. Meese held that post in the Reagan administration.