Americans born between V-J day and J.F.K. have always considered themselves the 20th century's chosen people. Their wonder years were blithe and prosperous; they invented sex, discovered candor and stopped an immoral war; they were rewarded with Haagen-Dazs and Saturday Night Live. Three decades ago, the Beatles' crude, cheerfully anarchic exuberance came as a revelation to the adolescents of the day, who proceeded to make an ideology and then a mass-market sensibility out of a certain high brattishness. Adolescent baby boomers were by turns passionate and sullen, angry at the world in general and grownups in particular, certain, above all, that...
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