In "Boom!," Tom Brokaw, one of America's premier journalists and the acclaimed author of The Greatest Generation, gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America: the tumultuous Sixties. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together in this "virtual reunion" as Brokaw takes us on a memorable journey through a remarkable time, exploring how individuals and the national mood were affected by a controversial era and showing how the aftershocks of the Sixties continue to resound in our lives today. In the reflections of a generation, Brokaw also discovers lessons that might guide us in the years ahead. Race, politics, war, feminism, popular culture, and music are all delved into here. Brokaw explores how members of this generation have gone on to bring activism and a Sixties mindset into individual entrepreneurship, as we hear stories of how this formative decade has shaped our perspectives on business, the environment, politics, family, and our national existence. Remarkable in its insights, wonderfully written and reported, this revealing book lets us join in these frank conversations about America then, now, and tomorrow.
Bonus DVD: Excerpt From 1968 with Tom Brokaw, A History Channel special

Praise for "Boom!"
"Tom Brokaw does an excellent job of capturing an exciting, controversial period in American history and "Boom!" is a worthy addition to his growing canon.""-New York Post
""[Tom Brokaw] approaches this magnum opus with warmth, curiosity and conviction, the same attributes that worked so well for his "Greatest Generation.""
-The New York Times
"[A] verbal scrapbook of the Sixties . . . ["Boom! "shows] that the era's core issues-racism, women's rights, a nation-dividing war-remain central today, and that the values boomers championed haven't yet gone bust."
-"People" (four stars)
"Packed with memorable people, places, events . . . A 'virtual reunion' of 1960s folks telling what they did back then, where they've been since and how they assess that tumultuous decade."
-"Chicago Tribune"
"Genuinely fascinating recollections . . . plenty of memorable anecdotes."
-"The Wall Street Journal"

"In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today.
"At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous and short-lived celebrations and immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation made it possible for more of them to attend college than any society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new science, literature, art, industry, and economic strength unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so many stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too.
"This book, I hope, will in some small way pay tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we have today--an American family portrait album of the greatest generation."
In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out), friends for life.
Through these and other stories in The Greatest Generation, you'll relive with ordinary men and women, military heroes, famous people of great achievement, and community leaders how these extraordinary times forged the values and provided the training that made a people and a nation great.

Over 150,000 troops landed on the five beaches of D-Day, with over 20,000 reported casualties across both sides. June 6, 1944 will be a day forever remembered in history. The story of D-Day has been told on countless occasions, and is an event that reverberates through time as one of the most pivotal moments in our history. "Everything We Have" tells the personal stories of the people involved in Operation Overlord, in their own words. Using rare documents, artifacts and first-hand accounts from The US National WWII Museum's official archives, you can gain a rare insight into the thoughts and feelings of those soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy.

Ours To Fight For relies on oral testimony and allows readers to understand the story of the twentieth centurys greatest conflict in gripping, first-person detail. Soldiers like Bernard Branson wanted those sons of bitches to know that a Jew was bombing them; others, like Jack Scharf, just couldnt face it when they were confronted with the atrocities of the Holocaust. Marine reservist Evelyn Schecter Perlman put aside her career as a legal secretary and warned her older sisters, If youre waiting for me to get married, dont do it. The twelve stories presented here are told in the veterans own words, capturing the immediacy and spontaneity of oral testimony. The volume also contains new essays on the Jewish experience in World War II by scholars Jay M. Eidelman, Bonnie Gurewitsch, and William L. ONeill.

"In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today.
"At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous and short-lived celebrations and immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation made it possible for more of them to attend college than any society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new science, literature, art, industry, and economic strength unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so many stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too.
"This book, I hope, will in some small way pay tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we have today--an American family portrait album of the greatest generation."
In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out), friends for life.
Through these and other stories in The Greatest Generation, you'll relive with ordinary men and women, military heroes, famous people of great achievement, and community leaders how these extraordinary times forged the values and provided the training that made a people and a nation great.

"From the Hardcover edition."

The heartwarming "New York Times" bestseller by the author of The Greatest Generation
"When I wrote about the men and women who came out of the Depression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices in World War II and then returned home to begin building the world we have today ... it was my way of saying thank you. I was not prepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off by that book.
"I had written a book about America, and now America was writing back."
Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those who gave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy of heroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out of the vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager to share their personal memories and experiences of a momentous time in America's history.
These letters and reflections cross time, distance, and generations as they give voice to lives forever changed by war: eighty-year-old Clarence M. Graham, who recounts his harrowing experience as a soldier captured by the Japanese -- and provides a gripping eyewitness account of the dropping of the atomic bomb; Patricia Matthews Dorph, a soldier's daughter who shares the love letters her parents exchanged during the war, a lasting legacy of passion, devotion, and enduring love; Rabbi Judah Nadich, the first Jewish chaplain to serve in the war; Lorraine Davis, a civilian who helped form the Club of '44, a group of wartime wives who still meet today.
From the front lines of battle to the back porches of beloved hometowns, The Greatest Generation Speaks brings to life the hopes and dreams of a generation who fought our most hard-won victories, and whose struggles and sacrifices made our future possible.

Father Gregory J. Boyle, SJ, is a native of Los Angeles, a Jesuit priest, and founder of Homeboy Industries, an economic development and jobs program begun in 1988 for at-risk and gang-involved youth. ""A great many kids in my neighborhood don't plan their futures; they plan their funerals."" ""G-Dog and the Homeboys"" presents the story of Boyle's unconventional ministry and its extraordinary successes. In this expanded, updated edition, Celeste Fremon has returned to East L.A. to report on gang members she first profiled fifteen years ago. Using their individual stories as models, she examines what policy makers should know about gang intervention now, years later.