How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America - A Generation of Sociopaths

Full disclosure. I'm nothing resembling a boomer. I was born in 1995. My politics are pretty normal center-left. I agree with some policy prescriptions, and disagree with others the author presents. Most people will feel this way, and it has nothing to do with my review. If reviews permitted me to be more specific, I'd probably give the book 3.75 stars.

When you open the book, you will find a lot of a lot of details, political, economic, and social to back up the arguments the author makes. They are generally well-sourced and reputable. The writing in the book is funny and concise and makes some of the harder to read chapters, such as the one on monetary policy, much more readable.

Unfortunately for some, I find the arguments around monetary, entitlements, and tax policy (the dismal science) by the author to be the most compelling. As a finance guy, it's clearly his area of expertise. One particularly good argument he makes is the movement of the estate tax through the years to benefit the boomer generation.

Another chapter which is the very important reading is regarding the boomer neglect of addressing climate change. Perhaps it didn't need to be written about, as any scientifically literate individual needs to acknowledge the points Gibney is making on this subject.

The afterword is an immensely enjoyable victory lap, I must say.

There are two main issues that I have with the book.

First, I sometimes feel that the definition of a boomer is not clear enough for the reader. I understand the reader gives certain years to the reader, but there are a number of caveats. For example, immigrants aren't included, despite the author mentioning Canadian and South African boomers at certain points. Sometimes, you also wonder that when specifics are presented (ie Vietnam mutinies) if some of those were done by non-white individuals of boomer age. What is also murky is what classifies as boomer power---whether it is when they became of voting age, or started holding office changes.

Second, the parents of the boomers are sometimes absolved of the way they were raised. The sociological descriptions (ie Dr. Spock) were very interesting, but explain a mistake made by the parents of the boomers. I suppose though, that sociopaths can be the way they are through not fault of their own.

I think this is an interesting read overall. I'd recommend it.

This is a difficult concept to push about a generation. I have always thought that that generation seemed a little entitled, but wouldn't really categorize them as sociopaths. I am not sure it is their fault. They grew up during a time where they were "the" generation...they got mostly everything they wanted (well, some subgroups did) as the country was prospering at that time, and there were enough of them that they were (and still are) a big voting block. They sort of seemed to be pampered by their parents and catered to by others. Need a new school? ok. Need free college? ok. Need new housing? ok. And future generations sort of had to pick from their leftovers. They do seem to look mostly at their own generation and not really worry about anyone else. Protesting was "good" then, but frowned upon many by many of them now. Social programs were great...when THEY were the beneficiaries, but now that they are the payers..they don't want them anymore. The poor or uneducated now seemed to be looked upon with disdain by that generation, not needing help...and never need "their" taxes (but it was fine to take older folks' "taxes" when they were young.) I fear they will want to dismantle social security and/or medicare...of course AFTER they are done taking from it...not their generation. I have said that that generation was selfish many times...maybe the author overheard me at a dinner party once! haha! I realize that generalizing an entire generation is a mistake (there are always some good ones and some bad ones in any group), but it seems to be a trend with this one. I would call it more "selfish" than "sociopathic", though. And again, I do feel that it wasn't really their fault at first, but maybe it is time for many of them to think about what they can give others rather than what they can get. I used to think that the Gen Ys were a good hope, but I think having boomers for parents didn't do them any favors. Gen X is good, but they are small and out-voted by boomers. Maybe their kids (millennials) are our best hope.

I asked to interview Gibney for my blog. His publicist said he was too busy, but she sent me a review copy of it at no cost.

In 2012 I wrote and published "The Candy Store Generation: How the Baby Boomers Are Screwing-Up America". The last chapter was titled "Had Enough", where I predicted that sometime in the future a generation would arise and say "We've had enough," and they would right the many wrongs of the Boomers. I think, with Gibney's book, we may be seeing the first salvo from the Had Enoughs. And, as a Boomer, I have to say it stings, more than a little. It was one thing for me to write about my own generation, but quite different to see a young GenExer do it.

Gibney's book suffers from not knowing whether it's scholarly or popular. Hence it has footnotes galore and many technical terms to placate the scholars, and just enough common language to keep the non-scholars reading. He is certainly provocative, I'll give him that.

Only read this if you have a lot of time to pay attention.

While the data and examples the author gives to support his claim are certainly compelling, I found it lacking in many respects. First, if one attempts to diagnose an entire generation with antisocial personality disorder, and uses the DSM-V to achieve that end, then you have to stick to the clinical guidelines set forth by the DSM-V. That means that the symptoms must be present prior to 15 years of age, and the individual (or generation) being diagnosed must also meet a certain number of the list of behaviors in order to achieve a true diagnosis. Mr. Gibney does somewhat acknowledge this, but does not meet that standard.

Second, many of the correlations he draws between the childhood and subsequent APD behaviors of the boomers are tenuous at best. Were the boomers raised differently than generations before them? Certainly. But he does not prove, or even convincingly argue, that these differences begat the conditions which led to abnormally high rates of personality disorders in boomers. Additionally, because statistics are largely not available for these rates in generations prior to the boomers, we are left to assume that these earlier generations presented at lower rates of personality disorders based on anecdotal evidence. It could be that the greatest generation was, in fact, more prone to sociopathy than the boomers, and gen-x less so than the boomers, indicating a downward trend generation over generation.

Lastly (and this was the part were it became quite clear that the author was trying a little too hard to bolster his claim with anything that sounded good), he paraphrased Socrates to declare that all civil disobedience, whether hypocritical or righteous, is inherently antisocial. I sincerely doubt that the participants in the civil rights movement would agree with that very narrow assessment.

I'm sure the author is very intelligent and committed himself to the research in order to get to the bottom of what many people suspect -- that the baby boomer generation is increasingly becoming a drain on our society, and all by their design. However, he is not a clinician and does not back up his claims of diagnosing them with antisocial personality disorder with much in the way of true evidence. Certainly, there are many visible boomers in politics and culture who are very likely sociopaths. However, this book reads more like a polemic against the boomers, an informed condemnation of sorts. It is not a complete work, in my opinion.

The primary premise within this book is that "as a generation, the Boomers present as distinctly sociopathic, displaying antisocial tendencies to a greater extent than their parents and their children." And it certainly is a bold premise, promising to provoke enough controversy to propel sales. It does not work as serious methodology, no matter how seriously Gibney tries to sell or it how honestly serious most of Gibney's economic and social policy diagnoses are. That is a shame. The seriousness of the discussion in the later chapters is overshadowed by the ridiculousness of the starting premise.

Contrary to what a cursory google search might suggest, diagnosing sociopathy is a more complicated matter than Gibney presents, after all sociopath is itself a colloquial term. Diagnosis is something better left to expert opinion, something which Gibney's background in venture capital and Silicon Valley ties do not grant him. Making such a diagnosis on a statistically large population isn't something people serious about psychology or sociology or even public policy do.

It is not until the afterword that Gibney admits that Boomers aren't actual sociopaths. It's a contrivance he has invented to make Boomers a mythical and political Other to make common enemy and inspire younger people to unite and fix the problems he's spent a book diagnosing. As much as Gibney positions himself as the serious adult in the room ready to diagnose the super serious problems facing the country, his own methodology is not of the kind a serious analysis would use. It's a detriment to his policy discussion, proposals and advocacy.

The initial chapters attempt to explain why Boomers are sociopaths (even though Gibney eventually admits it is a contrivance). These chapters are full of sloppy pop-psychology. Gibney discusses Dr. Spock and permissive parenting, the rise of television and bottle feeding. The whole exercise is sloppy and gives the easy impression Gibney is out of his element here. And of course it doesn't really even matter much when it isn't sincere.

Perhaps if we are to grant the premise of this generation of sociopaths as a contrivance or a metaphor to explore antisocial decisions and policy preferences of a large, temporally related statistical population we would find a lot of Gibney's policy discussion interesting.

There is an interesting chapter on Boomers and the Vietnam War, for example. Gibney makes a striking argument about broad support of then young Boomers for the war itself, even while they tried to evade the draft.

The bulk of the book is about entitlement spending, specifically social security and medicare. Social security in particular becomes Gibney's secondary target. He hammers his point home about it's looming financial shortfalls. So much so, in fact, that the tone of the main chapter on entitlements is highly discordant with the prescription he eventually recommends. You'd think he wanted poor seniors out on the streets, but he just recommends raising age eligibility and broadly raising taxes in the present.

There are other chapters on education and anti-empiricist culture, but Gibney is less in his element here. He clearly has no expertise for fixing the education system as a whole and as far as deriding anti-intellectualism, he seems ignorant of the force's near constant historical presence in American thought.

To sum up: A Generation of Sociopaths is a highly contrived work, with a premise that you could take as a useful metaphor, even though the author takes it seriously until the end. It's exactly as smug in tone as you expect from a venture capitalist with Silicon Valley ties talking about entitlement spending to be. It diagnosis serious problems, sometimes with good policy prescriptions. But it is hard to take seriously with an unserious premise.

Bruce Gibney’s “A Generation of Sociopaths” is a long overdue description of where America is and how we got here. That’s it for my praising it because I think this is an excellent book, but I don’t want to just re-hash what is in the book. Just let me state that it should be read by everybody who is 18 or over–especially those who are 65 and up.

A few complaints about the book:
1, As a baby boomer, I resent the idea of describing a whole generation as one thing. There is an enormous variation in any generation and to describe it as if it is 100% anything is disingenuous at best. On the other hand, the facts fit the pattern that the _dominant_ portion of this generation did indeed betray America.

2. Gibney accepts “A Nation At Risk” as a legitimate report. This hatchet job was used to destroy education and was very successful at it: It was not accurate or honest, however.

3. A missing part of this book is what to do about the churches (and synagogues and mosques). They are a political force, especially in the South and, they have a destructive effect on all of society. To effect change, the influence of churches will have to change.

4. The make-up and the way the Senate are elected (and the electoral college) are addressed only in passing. Gibney addresses the judiciary as a source of problems, but does not address how to change this. He acknowledges these as problematic, but the whole government will have to be on board to make the changes that he (accurately) sees as needed.

In line with much of the rhetoric about the “bad” generation, it must be pointed out that Gibney is himself a product of Silicon Valley. This is not in itself bad, but it is not an automatic good, either.

This book was written before Donald became president, so Gibney does not address the effect of his presidency. However, it is clear to this casual observer that Donald is the incarnation of all the characteristics of the generation that Gibney describes. Perhaps this will be the spark that starts the rapid (r)evolution that he hopes for–and that we need.

A pay as you go government, an excellent infrastructure, near full employment in worthwhile jobs, and the other things Gibney foresees are possible. Lets begin now.

This book gave me a new perspective on political parties (democrat or republican- boomers look out for boomers) and the machinations in Washington. Although the book portrays boomers in a negative light, Gibney has optimism for the future based off of the past. However, it almost needs to be updated already with the financial implications of the new cuts.

You have to get past the title. I actually consider the title to be ableist, and because of the title many people who would otherwise love this book will probably never read it. But Gibney doesn't think that the Boomers are individually sociopaths, he thinks that the generation collectively displays all the traits of sociopathy. It is a guide for Boomers who have always felt that there is something wrong about the way they have governed, and it is a guide for Millennials and X'ers to know how to begin fixing the problems. I think it's a great book, with the potential to change the national conversation.

First, the title is needlessly misleading and provocative. The book does *not* make the case that individual Baby Boomers are sociopaths. Instead, the book makes the case that *as a generation*, Baby Boomers have pressed for political or economic solutions that either benefit them as a generation, offer instant gratification over considered policy, or shift taxes or other economic burdens for policies Boomer politicians enact onto other generations (their parents, their children).

Second, look closely at the reviews here and you'll note that virtually all of the negative reviews are people who didn't buy the book and in most cases didn't read the book: they found the book based on the strength of one badly-edited Boston Globe article published in early March 2017.

With that said, the book definitely has some weak points. Trying to apply psychological theory onto an entire generation is obviously not going to work out well (and to his credit, the author neither tries to belabor this point nor does he spend much time on it). And when he digs into more esoteric economic theory, he's almost certainly going to lose most readers. He also doesn't press a key point home hard enough: that Baby Boomers have had majority (and indeed super-majority) control of both the U.S. House and Senate for decades. So when a choice is put before them that benefits Boomers (who are also not coincidentally a majority of *voters*), they're going to take it because they like to be reelected.

Once a history lesson of the Boomers's growing-up years is complete, the author slowly builds toward a devastating case: that Boomer politicians have enacted policies to benefit their own generation at the expense of others because they like being reelected. Boomers themselves see no problem with this by and large, even though its their children and grand-children who will pay the price. Therefore, it's not so much a sociopathic tendency as a short-sighted one. Boomers don't mind much that Social Security will be insolvent by 2040 because by then most of them will be gone. They don't mind much that the air will be thick with smog and the water thick with industrial waste because they won't have to breathe it or drink it. They don't care that Miami and lower Manhattan will be under two feet of water because they won't be going there. And most importantly, they don't care what the national debt will be because they won't have to pay the bill.

All of these points are backed up with hard data and historical fact. The three most devastating chapters focus on Boomer politician actions with regard to tax policy, economic policy, and debt. Point after point after point is made, each with strong examples, that make it clear that when choices had to be made, choices were made that happened to (a) benefit the Baby Boomers, and (b) put the cost of those choices somewhere else. A shorter case is made that Boomer politicians learned they could do this because the previous two generations grew up sacrificing their own benefits for their children (the Boomers), and they just got used to getting their instant gratification every time.

But the Boomers themselves let it happen because they like instant gratification at any cost and never learned a need to sacrifice. So the author pegs them as sociopaths for that reason.

Whether you agree with the final premise or not, it's certainly hard to argue with the facts and analysis that got the author there, and for those reasons, the book is worth reading for that reason. So if you're going to argue against it, make sure you have the facts and data before you...

This book gets harder to argue against every week.

It should be left in hotel rooms everywhere, like Gideon bibles.

Required reading for those of us waiting for the "I don't get technology" generation to finally retire and hopefully stop voting.

Eye opening to say the least. Getting an actual baby boomer to read it (parents are born in '46) with open eyes is a different story, as the book pretty much (via statistics) puts to rest any notion that the boomer generation is somehow harder workers and superior to the younger generations.

An exceptionally thought-provoking book that sets out to answer the question of how America has been raided politically, socially and economically by the massive post-war generation known as the Baby Boomers. It is strident in places - polemical but "what a polemic" in the words of another review - but is very worth the read for anyone trying to understand how we got to the political dead end where we find ourselves in 2017. Exceedingly well researched as well. I feel frequently that the author is oversimplifying complex situations to make his point but yield to the persuasiveness of his argument.

Mr Gibney’s book is seemingly controversial because of its adversarial tone. I am interested in exploring the topic and thought this book could be both interesting and illuminating. Unfortunately, Mr Gibney’s big complaint is that the Boomer Generation is large. Their largeness gives them an oversized reach. It also makes an easy target.

Mr Gibney could have given us a scholarly examination. Instead his book reads like a diatribe. Societal control must be taken from the Boomers. Make no mistake, Mr Gibney’s attack is on future society paying for social security and the safety nets. No meaningful examination that taxes and unbudgeted, unending wars have anything to do with our problem. Mr Bibney’s only solution is to halt the payout. As Mr Gibney says, “As for soaking the rich, there aren’t that many of them (it’s called the 1 percent for a reason) and they can be dunked only so many times” p340. Sounds like a one trick pony to me.

Now, I agree with Mr Gibney. There are a lot of sociopaths running out there. They’ve caused a lot of horrible destruction and must be stopped. It may be foolishness on my part but if the vast humanity is gong to have a better life, we have to figure out how to encourage people to be less selfish and more cooperative for the common good.

Having lived overseas, I am not quick to think this is strictly an American problem as Mr Gibney does. We are living through a time when there are a great many sociopaths of all ages, in all regions of the world. I wonder how history will read. But if sociopathy is not a strict American epidemic with singular blame on Dr Spock’s child rearing philosophy, Mr Gibney’s tirade comes apart.

But that does not mean this is not a worthy subject. I hope a sociologist with no agenda will pick up this topic and help us understand the problems and possible solutions.

Witnessing first hand how this "me" generation has consistently denied opportunity to their children and grandchildren in order to serve their own interests, this book is both hilarious and painful. A well written, documented, and merciless breakdown of the past decades, this book causes quite a stir; thus, its one star reviews are more a badge of honor than anything. A bold and entertaining book that inspires the rest of us to be the opposite - to be the generation that gives more.

As a "boomer," I believe all that comment here should identify their generation whether it be Boomer,Generation X or Millennial. Point 1; every generation is smarter than their parents generation. Point 2; Many corporate heads are Generation X, and many ran their corporations into the ground. Point 3; while our system is flawed, it has been better than anything else out there. No socialist government has lasted anywhere near our history. Point 4; Power Breeds Corruption; from day one, new Congressional members are under the thumb of senior members who are on the gravy train. John McCain is worth $30 million and former V.P. Joe Biden, a boomer, recently got the Chinese to write a 1.5 billion dollar deal for his son, a MILLENIAL. Biden's son by this author's definition is a Sociopath.

The only explanation for the negative reviews is that the "readers" did not actually open the book. The title may scare people off but the salient point - that a generation traded abundance for debt and mortgaged their descendants' future for their own benefit is hard to dispute.

This book starts with an interesting premise, but the author's "evidence" is just ridiculous. Essentially, he argues that everything bad that happened when the boomers were a major part of the American population is their fault. He continually tries to fit Boomers to the DSM-V diagnosis for Sociopathy which is just nonsense as any psychiatrist would tell you. Gibney also never bothers to consider alternative explanations for the problems of modern America, that it's the system or class warfare by the rich and corporations that's at fault, not a generation. Where the book is actively dangerous is in the Libertarian "solutions" Gibney promotes- 1. We're not spending enough on Defense (really?! when we outspend almost the entire world, we need to spend more!?) 2. Nuclear power will solve climate change (Gibney dismisses solar/wind power despite the fact they're cheaper than fossil fuels, never mentions the Stanford plan that will get us to 100% renewables by 2030, and doesn't reference Fukushima). 3. To fix education, we need to give kids more homework and a longer school year (The best country Education-wise, Finland, gives students almost no homework. At least he acknowledges we need more money for education and more professionalism by teachers.). 4. Medicare doesn't work and is a giveaway to Boomers, so forget about single payer. The author also attacks Bernie Sanders, repeating Clintonite slanders about how "unrealistic" Bernie was, because of course Capitalism has nothing to do with our current problems (weird, since he spends plenty of time attacking the Clintons). One generally gets the sense that Gibney ignores evidence that doesn't fit his narrative. BTW, I'm a Gen Xer, so not defending my generation here.

All you really need to know about the reviews here:

Every* 5 star is from a non-sociopathic, non-Baby-Boomer, non-"Me"-Generation, non-social-vampire.

Every* 1 star is from a sociopathic generational vampire. The Greatest Generation raised the Worst Generation. Everyone with any moral clarity knows it.

*overgeneralization, obviously. And I have only read the first 2 chapters and heard a couple interviews with the author (so far he is basically channelling a thesis I have held for a decade or more.)
Also, please note that as of 3.18.17, not a single one-star review is verified. *That* right there says more than a lil' bit about the "methinks they doth protest too much" Vampire Generation.

This book is a must read for anybody interested in understanding the U.S. and its recent history.
The author is very smart and knowledgeable, writes well, and tells it like it is.
I am grateful that there are people like him in this country and I would love to meet him in person.

An excellent read which traces the boomers from their anti-war, pro-civil rights, drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s to the pro-war, anti-LGTB, 'war on drugs' culture of today. Although the author does clearly have a political lean he is still able to cite sources and the actions which created today's world of income inequality and reduced social mobility.

This is a bomb dropped into the palatial, relaxed world of Baby Boomer beliefs in their own kindness, generosity, and goodness. And it's about time, too. Because this book helps to explain why the view we have of Baby Boomers is so very, very wrong. Just look at the Boomers in control of this country right now and tell me "they're doing a great job." What I found interesting about this book was how very un-partisan it is (both Republicans and Democrats come off particularly bad here, because they've got the shared goal of "getting mine" while screwing over future generations like my own and that of the younger Millennials who are supposedly "what's wrong with America" in this day and age. Gibney makes a compelling case that the Boomers were far from innocent flower-power children in the Sixties (the history of which they helped to shape, but the narrative doesn't hold water if you examine it even a little more closely than popular TV or histories written by Boomers would have it be). And they never learned to take responsibility for their own actions, Gibney argues, so that we, the younger generations who came after, will have to bear the financial burden of their unrestrained greed and mendacity.

Baby Boomers, as Gibney defines them, are predominantly white, native-born Americans who came into this world between 1940 and 1964 and who were never forced to sacrifice anything if they could help it (minorities who weren't gifted with the privileges of being white in America don't fall under his gaze, and indeed are as much victims of their cohorts' greed as anyone else). Gibney exposes the truth behind the "selfless" protests of the Vietnam war and how rates of protest were highest when the danger of being drafted affected young, privileged Boomers directly. Coming into power in the eighties and nineties, the Boomers had the chance to enact the far-reaching and stated goals that they espoused in their youths; instead, they began to accumulate that wealth and power that they now continue to possess (look at who's in the White House, and who would've been in the White House either way). Everyone suffers because the Boomers weren't told "no" enough in their childhoods.

Frankly, it would be surprising if Gibney's narrative didn't attract some naysayers, and I can see where those especially of the generation he eviscerates are offended. But the study of history, real history, shows that the narrative we're given oftentimes reflects what the victors want us to know. In this case, the Boomers won...and it would seem that no one else can, if it comes at the cost of the Boomers. There is room to argue whether this narrative is itself flawed, but I wonder how many of the negative reviews are based on a cursory reading of the book, if a reading at all.

This is the best anti-baby-boomer book ever written (of course, there aren't many of those because the boomers have controlled the narrative for decades now). Of course the boomers give this book a low rating because they are guilty as charged and aren't used to being called out. But they're lucky that we haven't come after them with pitchforks and torches -- yet...

Bruce had an irritating way of using excerpts of the clinical definition for sociopath as chapter headings, and applying to all Boomers (Boomers seemed to have a relatively fluid definition such as those born in America between 1940-1960, 1945-1960s, whites only, etc) He also exercised an extensive vocabulary, along with overly simplistic explanations as to why the Boomers are to blame. This is not at all a nuanced discussion of the past 40+ years. And an implication (perhaps more - I didn't finish the book) that salvation will come once the Boomers relinquish leadership to the next generation. Some interesting facts and historical review thrown in. Disclaimers - I'm a Boomer who experienced things differently that Bruce described; I only borrowed the book; I attempted to read this after reading 'The Vanishing American Adult' by Ben Sasse

Lectures from a hedge fund guy? who contributed to the social media revolution which in my opinion in turn contributed heavily to bi-partisanship and loss of manners. Interesting read but not completely credible from that standpoint. I wholeheartedly agree with the environmental concerns. Millennials: pls get out and vote early and often!

Author Bruce Cannon Gibney has a horn that has been tooted toward mad money billionaire-ism. His books include "A Generation of Sociopaths," about Baby Boomers and their role in American stagnation and "What Happened To The Future?", an influential essay about the origins of America’s technological stagnation. The staggering portion of his resume comes next – he ‘worked at a hedge fund and as a partner at one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture firms, Founders Fund. His personal and fund investments included early stakes in PayPal, Facebook, Spotify, Palantir Technologies, now one of the world’s biggest start-ups, Lyft, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Airbnb, Stemcentrix, AI pioneer DeepMind and others.’ So we hear this interesting diatribe from one of the ‘haves’ instead of the other side of the huge gap that separates the ‘have nots’- and if anything that gives his words more credence. That – and the fact that Bruce is a very handsome, very polished writer!

‘Sociopaths’ are defined by 1) lying, deception, and manipulation for profit or self-amusement, 2) blatant disregard for the safety of self and others, 3) displaying a pattern of irresponsibility, 4) lack of remorse for actions. And Bruce defines the Baby Boomers with a more broad spread than most – those born between 1940 – 1964. In an acerbic but at the same time humorous manner he describes the mess of the Vietnam War and its ongoing after effects of disillusionment, PTSD, live for the moment philosophy, the hippie movement, flower children, drugs, spend for today because there is no promise about tomorrow attitude, the disillusionment in government, unprecedented imprisonment to improvident tax cuts – in other words, usurping national wealth while leaving subsequent generations with the bill. Me me me, Now now now.
Of interest Bruce includes some telling quotes from famous people to round out his dissection the Baby Boomers. He quote Boomer David Mamet as stating in 2011- ‘We were taught in the sixties to award ourselves merit for membership in a superior group – irrespective of our or the group’s accomplishments. We continue to do so, irrespective of accomplishments, having told each other we were special. We learned that all one need do is refrain from trusting anyone over thirty…we were the culmination of history, superior to all those misguided who had come before, which is to say all humanity.’

Bruce describes the Baby Boomers as ‘anti-social’, turning American dynamism into ‘stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco.’ Or as the summary phrases it, ‘The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.’

Pretty dreary thoughts, but take some time to reflect on the way he presents his thesis and at least the edges of the Boomers tuck in there with a fit. Books like this plead to be controversial – that is the way they sell. And that will make the author even more wealthy while sitting at his many board meetings where the current ‘new sociopaths’ are making the future toto-tech! Grady Harp, March 17
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.

This book cherrypicks facts, generalizes and stereotypes too much to be an objective study. While I agree with much of his analysis of the selfish 'Me' generation, much of it is based on preconception and opinion.

Gibney tends to lump Civil Rights, women's rights & environmental activists, who selflessly fought to protect America and democracy, in with the selfish, gullible Nixon, Reagan, Bush & now Trump boomers, who have indeed sold the country down the river.

What I came away with from this book is that it is yet another attempt to divide Americans by blaming a broad group - in this case an age-group - for our social, economic and political troubles. As such, it differs little from attempts to divide people by race, sex, nationality, religion, etc. Reality, of course, is far more complex.

There are much better, more objective surveys of how we got where we are.

Absolutely riveting depiction of the generation that created America today. As a millenial taught history, literature and life by boomers my whole life, this alternative perspective on the election of 2016, and the social and political circumstances that led to it was refreshing and eye opening. Could not recommend this book more for younger (and self aware older) people looking for answers as to how we, as a nation, got here and why.

A hedge fund manager trying to set generations against one another to deflect us away from the class conflict that is the true source of these woes. Sure pal, its not the greedy rich who caused all this, it's the hippies, the people who originated the ecology movement, and the folks who've spent their lives trying to build a better world. I bet you also sell swampland in Arizona, and shares in the Brooklyn Bridge.

Entertaining and, yes, there are facts, but facts that are not complete. The "facts" that provide support to the theory that baby boomers are a generation of sociopaths are included, but facts that would counter this assumption are not included. This reminds me of a similar published work in Time Magazine about The Millenials being the Me Me Generation. Oversimplified, heavy on anecdotal information, short on complete facts, and provides yet another way for we Americans to point the finger -- we prefer doing that rather than actually solving our problems. It is entertaining, but read it for the entertainment value and do your own research if you're interested.

A promising argument spoilt by bad history and more stretching than Mr Fantastic

This book mixes two arguments, one of them reasonable, interesting, and plausible, and the other one tendentious, insulting, and crude.

The first argument is this: the unusual generational power of the Baby Boomers has given them undue weight in American society, leading to policies that have favored Boomers as they aged, from the rewriting of tax codes to the defensiveness around entitlements for the elderly today. Boomers were born into an unusually prosperous era and squandered some of its potential through selfish politics.

The second argument - and, unfortunately, the one most of the book is devoted to - is this: the Boomers are an unusually selfish, indeed, sociopathic generation whose every action, from marriage to politics, reeks of self-interest.

Why is this second argument bullshit? Well, for starters, the central conceit that Gibney hangs the book on - that Boomers are 'sociopathic' - completely misinterprets the scientific literature on sociopathy. Sociopathy is a defined disorder in a very small part of the population, not something you can smear tens of millions of people with. What I suspect started as a metaphor becomes a thesis that Gibney tries to defend by flinging every bit of mud he can at the Boomers - sometimes on frankly bizarre moral and ethical grounds. Thus we learn that breaking the law is always wrong, and so the Boomers' love of weed and other illegal drugs shows their sociopathy. This argument, of course, makes the Americans who were adults between 1920 and 1933 the most sociopathic generation of all - thanks to a massively flouted Prohibition. Boomers are also sociopaths because the Catholic ones don't follow every part of Church doctrine but instead challenge it - which is strange, because it seems fairly obvious there might have been rather cogent reasons for American Catholics to challenge their church, like, say, the massive child abuse. (Let's note here that the exposure and challenging of institutional child abuse, from churches to schools, was largely led by the Boomer generation.) . It's striking that a book so keen to accuse others of sociopathy seems to have so little empathy.

As for the grasp of prior American history - well, it's ... um ... shaky at best. Apparently America before the Boomers was rational and loved Science, until they came along with their Feelings. Thus, of course, the rise of the Know-Everything Party, the Scopes We-Love-Darwin Party, and the cool, calculated rationalism of racial science. (Seriously, the idea that the Boomers were the first American generation to value their own feelings above 'reason' is absurd nonsense; 19th century American politics is full of rank sentimentality, curdled self-interest - chiefly racial - and appeal to raw emotion.)

For a man who likes to talk about things being 'rational,' Gibney seems pretty shaky on the idea that correlation doesn't equal causation. Every failing of the last 40 years, from Vietnam to Watergate to the War on Drugs (even though drugs are for SOCIOPATHS because BREAKING THE LAW IS ALWAYS WRONG), is blamed on the Boomers - whose responsibility (and even who counts as a Boomer) seems to stretch whenever needed. The Boomers are blamed for America's failure to reach the levels of growth of 1945-1970 - even though that same historical pattern is repeated across modernizing societies. (See Marc Levinson's "An Extraordinary Time" for a far more sober and informed take on this). The crime rise that peaked in the mid-90s is blamed on the Boomers, even though the overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by 18-30 year olds, suggesting a very different historical cohort.

It would, of course, be grossly unfair to suggest that Silicon Valley is filled with a generation of mildly autistic men who have been fooled by the unusual luck of their success into thinking that they posses an objective and rational view of the world*.

But by God, this book would be a decent piece of evidence for the case.

First off, I read only the introductory portion provided by "Look Inside," because I generally do when deciding whether I will invest any money in a publication. As a former psychotherapist born in 1957, I find the title and flinging around of serious psychopathology by someone whose claim to fame is investing in PayPal and Facebook (and now thinks he's an expert on the DSM) both irresponsible and demonstrative of the same narcissistic lack of empathic imagination he projects onto a generation. Or a capacity to differentiate between, as one other commenter suggested, correlation and causation. Yes, the political and economic decisions apparently described herein were made in the period during which Baby Boomers grew into adulthood and assumed the role of leadership, but that is correlative not causative, and is not diagnostic of a generation any more than the stupid suggestion that the "Me" or the "Gen-X" or the "Millenial" designation is meaningful.

I'm an "Echo Boomer," by the way, which means that I fall into the group blamed with betrayal, but not just because I was born in 1957. The "echo" is in the fact that I am the youngest child in a family. My peers also born in 1957 who were first children in families do not qualify for the designation because their "views" of the world do not include the memory of experience of life post-WWII. I would submit, then, to this author and anyone who would fall for his theories without question, that he did not address the one causal factor in the lives of any child who entered school in the early to late 50s and 60s -- the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945. No, we didn't walk through security into our schools as many of you did, and we can't fully imagine what it is like to look around at your peers and wonder if they're gonna bring in an assault weapon and mow us down. But unless you remember what it was like or can attempt to imagine school drills that included nuclear fall-out shelters, wearing dogtags to school so they could identify your body in the event of nuclear war, living through the shock of the death of a young president and countless other Americans who were seeking to improve the lives of all, or years-long anxiety over whether or not Walter Cronkite's listing of casualties in the Vietnam War would include your brother or the young man who used to wink at you in church, STFU until you can. Until you grasp the effects of living in a world where bombers and fighter pilots and hand-to-hand combat, as gruesome as they were, were threats to your existence only if they were waged in your village, onlly to wake up to the newfound awareness that "over there" no longer had meaning, what future plans would you have made? What generations to come would you have planned for? Under those circumstances, it takes significant moral courage, which has never been in great supply, to continue to think in terms of preparing for children who might not ever be.

Even so, I didn't give this a 1-star rating because I suspect it is true that the book does indeed talk about the ill-fated decisions made in relation to economics and policies and technology and global integration in the years from 1968 forward, and their effects. Attention to what resulted from them, irrespective of who made them, is key to slowing the ungodly scourge of man-made destruction of the environment, growing income inequality, and actions by agreeably the most incompetent -- and perhaps sociopathic -- group of individuals ever to be "elected" to public office. Your first job as the leaders of tomorrow is to begin throwing them out in the upcoming elections of 2018.

But blaming us Boomers, even as we are guilty, won't change a damn thing. The past cannot be cured, and we're gonna be around longer than you think because of the medical advancements we made. The book that needs to be written is "How Some Baby Boomers Screwed it Up and How We're Gonna Fix It Without Finishing the Job." Write that and I'm with you, born in 1957 or not.

A book about a reality under Omertà, one generation's cashing in of its inheritance and theft of its progeny's future. Hopefully there will be more like it.

The one bone I have to pick with the book is that the author couldn't bring himself to identify the decline of the family as a huge harm in itself, and consistent with the damage done in business and government. Instead, he only notes that the sexual and family life of the Boomers contradicted the norms of the time, and thus are evidence of sociopathy.

At one time being against slavery violated the norms of the time too. That's not the problem. The problem is the impact on generations of children of the selfishness of adults, with perhaps one-third having stable childhoods instead of two-thirds of the Boomers themselves.

https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/generation-greed-and-the-family/

Millennial (or Gen X) Hipster takes on Baby Boomers! Hedge fund creep discovers pop sociology and writes airport book. Yawn. The selfless and long suffering Greatest Generation conceives the narcissistic Baby Boomer conceives the clueless and disconnected Millennials, etc. Oh wait, what about those cowboys in Montana, farmers in Wisconsin, Latinos in East LA and every other non-represented, non-suburban, non middle class population of America (Indigenous, Asian, Alabaman, etc)? A great example of "hey, I've got an opinion" and then looking for stories to support it. Someone else could write a book about how the revolutionaries of the Greatest Generation got lobotomized in the 1950s, but some of their kids (only some) challenged the compromised ideals and the racist militarized nationalism that was the status quo, and then they had kids (millennials) who turned out very similarly to their parents (same music, same clothes), only less racist and homophobic and more polite. Even in Arizona. See what good parenting can do? Get really rich, and then write about socio-pathology.

the writing in this book is great and persuasive. I did like the humor that is in this book to. The author backs up claims with data and explains things very well. It is really really super really tainted data, and very tainted point of view. Having said that if you can sift through that you can get to a really great read. How does the past effect the future of where we are going and who we are now? How does how they were raised effect us now. I liked these answers I got I just felt the writing was geared to give me certain answers if that makes sense. It is not a fairly balanced book that lets you draw your own conclusions. that is more like what I mean. Over all a thought provoking read

What a divisive, simplistic, inaccurate, opportunistic set of ramblings. If I could give a negative star I would. Based on the title, I would normally not purchase this book, but it was my Book Club’s selection for February. I did my best to give this a fair read, avoiding blogs and reviews to make my own assessment. I found the initial premise far too broad (all Baby Boomers lumped together) and the connections to the problems our world faces inadequately or inaccurately connected.

Given the broad-brush approach in assumptions, there is no possible option for reasonable debate. If you pick a broad enough group (all Baby Boomers) there will be anecdotal instances of both good and bad for any argument.

My biggest regret is that I paid for this claptrap. If there had been any way to read the book without contributing to Gibney’s pocketbook (in the time-frame I had) I would have done so.

Too simplistic to be taken seriously, even while he makes a number of interesting and important points. Too bad, this could have been an excellent book because generational conflict is a hugely important issue.

I think the biggest sociopath is the author, his interpretation of the facts is laughable. It was guys like him working for private equity along with traders, I-bankers and structured finance people who took down Wall Street, Insurance Company's and Banks with the mortgage meltdown and those people were not boomers, I had a front row seat at Citigroup. Any insights that the book offers are surrounded by a bias and intellectual dishonesty. You cannot read this book and believe that it is much more then half truths.

Bottom line: It's wrong to include people born after about 1958 in this screed. It's wrong to include non-white, non-straight, and non-male people in this diatribe. It's overbroad. It's a diatribe. It's an overbroad diatribe.

Mr. Gibney has a few good points about society in general these days, but he largely wastes them in this rant, starting with the first page of his Forward. While it is true that persons born between 1958 and 1964 have been included in the baby boom by demographers who were driven by marketing decisions, my cohort is not in any real sense - including the austerity-loving (for thee, not me) pragmatic corporatist politics - part of the baby boom. We are pragmatic in our personal and economic lives, because we have had to be, but our politicians are the daughters and sons of the silent generation, not the boomer children of the greatest. We never believed in American Exceptionalism. We grew up having our morning cartoons preempted by the hearings on MyLai and Watergate. Our mothers weren't home vacuuming and making cookies. The silents bottle-fed us, but they didn't overparent or overprotect: they doled out latchkeys in neighborhoods deserted during the day by mothers who had to work. We learned early to make our own meals and spent vast amounts of time completely unsupervised.The sexual revolution was over by the time we got there, thanks to incurable STDs. We never were led to believe that our bosses would hire for life or promote from within. Or pay a living wage. We're the bust, not the boom, which is why many demographers still start and end the boomer earlier by about 5 years, placing my cohort back in Generation X, where we started (thanks to a book written by Douglas Coupland, b. 1961, about people our age trying to get along with what it is to live in the boomers' - our ponytailed bosses' - wake).

Economically, ending the boom at around 1958 makes all the sense in the world: the boomers benefitted from the social safety net and from strong union presence in the workforce. Their dads made enough at their union jobs to support entire families and take everyone on yearly vacations. A college degree for a boomer was affordable and was a golden ticket to financial security starting at graduation. The busters graduated into Ronald Reagan's post-union, post-progressive taxation, endless war on the safety net world. All of those policies intentionally pulled up the ladder behind the boomers (although to be fair, it was their parents and mine who ruled the world when that was happening - the boomers just went along with it) and left the rest of us to fight among ourselves for what jobs and wages were left while the boomers (and their parents and mine) raised our retirement age (not theirs), killed our defined benefit pensions (not theirs, though), and then tanked the economy our defined contribution pensions (and yours, dear millennials and late X-ers) relied on. One more important demographic point, and then I'm going to drop it: Gibney's diatribe against all boomers forgets that lots of people who happened to be born then, e.g., people of color, most women, and gay people, did not have the means to benefit from the advantages conferred on those young white men and the women who either married them or had access to the kind of education that let them ride into corporate America on the back of first wave feminism.

So let's just say I was put off right from the start of the book. It didn't help that the book then went on to spend an inordinate number of pages railing against the Clintons (if our gentle author had graduated into Reaganomics instead of Clintonomics, imperfect though that was, he would have been as glad as we were even for the DLC triangulating that gave us one good decade of wage-earning, two liberal Supreme Court justices, and several other instances of boomer-rigging in favor of their own generation that just happened to benefit others as well). He goes on to acknowledge the uphill battle of the president from my actual generation, but blames him for making the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's a recent memory, and the president tried repeatedly to reinstate sane levels of taxation with no help from Congress and outright obstruction (to the point of shutting down the government) from the GOP.

The economic analysis is shallow but is probably the most worthwhile reading in the book, IF it provokes the reader to examine the arguments in favor of social spending and against the demonization of debt. As for the rest of it? Richard Dawkins has made an eloquent case for the idea that altruism is an adaptive trait. Or, was, anyway. I believe that it still is in the long run. However, Gibney is noticing a real phenomenon in a global economy that emphasizes short term gains for a few and that rewards that few in spite of the consequences of their actions for the many. For the segment of society epitomized by the most privileged generation ever, the consequences of their wrongdoing have mostly fallen on others. Not caring about that is a sociopathic trait. And it has become adaptive - at least in the short run.

Is it the boomers' fault? Well, yeah, kind of, considering that they've held the reins of power for all but 8 years since 1992 (and during those eight years, they obstructed any and all efforts to leave some for the rest of us) and are now back at the helm.

Does that justify Gibney's outright dismissal of all boomer accomplishments and characterization of the generation as one monolithic sociopathic political entity? I don't think so. Gibney's premise relies for its validity on the assumption that the privileged white person is the default human example of the generation. With boomers especially (and remember, I am not their biggest fan), that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Boomer women, people of color, and gay people have done some amazing things, made enormous progress that helped my generation so much that the generations that followed don't even understand how jeopardized their rights are right now. Those boomers gave us diversity. They refuted the Laffer Curve and the idea that gay people are somehow less entitled than straight people to marry the people they love. You cannot make a credible case against some of them by pretending it applies to all of them.

There is a problem here. But Gibney's not seeing it fully or describing it accurately.

For more information on the baby busters, especially a contemporaneous account of our economic conditions as compared to true boomers, see Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

For a good analysis of the factors at work in our economy, see The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.

For a more reasoned discussion of the baby boomers, see The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn't My Fault) (And I'll Never Do It Again).

I also recommend search the web with the query, "is sociopathy adaptive?" Fascinating reading there.

Mr. Gibney does a good job of blaming Baby Boomers for the downfall of the US economy. However, I find some flaws in his arguments. By pointing out a class of people (Boomers) to blame, he fails to note that the biggest benefit from the policies he faults went to the wealthy. He blames Boomers for the high level of US debt, reduction in savings rates, and crumbling infastructure, but fails to point out that decades-long low tax rates for upper income earners, such as himself, could be to blame. In other words, he blames Boomers, rather than the Wealthy. He points out California Prop-13 and other similar states' property tax caps as benefitting Boomers, but fails to point out that major agricultural corporations and other large businesses, along with wealthier homeowners, have been the biggest beneficiaries. Homeowners sell on average every ten years, while commercial property changes hands much less frequenty. Now residential property owners shoulder 72% of the tax burden while commercial only pays 28%.
Laying the blame for US ills squarely on the Boomers while avoiding pointing out that not only the wealthier Boomers, but the weathier generations since then have been the major recipients of the policies that he lays at the feet of only Boomers.

Did it ever occur to people like this author that Baby Boomers had a lot on their plates, that America was long overdue for a correction, that mass prosperity was a whole new game the human race had never seen before? The typical right-wing criticism of the BB is they were decadent and spoiled. Easy to say. Fun to stand on Mt. Righteous and hurl down judgement lighting bolts.

Maybe think about this (paraphrased) quote from Carlyle: "Don't tell me another story of a man who overcame overwhelming odds, tell me a story of a man who had it all and didn't mess it up." Blaming someone for having it all and turning out less than stellar doesn't get us anywhere. If you believe Hollywood, the aristocracy have been doing that for centuries. The Right expected the BB to, what?, invent Spartan hardships so as to not be too soft in those suburbs, not question the hypocrisy, the racism, the sexism, the military-industrial complex, the jingoism, the mindless materialism, etc., etc. festering in this land? It would have been a very bizarre, twisted, and perverse time had they not. Let's face facts, 50s-60s America was very sore from growing pains, and IMHO something had to give.

With Maslow's pyramid, the highest level, self-actualization, is the toughest. A whole generation had the lower base taken care of and were, thus, freed up to take a shot at the peak. Granted, they by and large failed. But what will happen the next time a generation gets a free pass (due to technology and prosperity?), will they do any better? These arguments against the BB are a few trees but no forest. I'll add some more realistic criticisms. For example, we BBers learned a very important lesson in that grandiose idealism is cheap, while follow-through is very hard, very messy. Sure, we blathered on about all the ills and evils in the world, and, yes, we did precious little to correct them. And yet never has a society seen such prosperity -- and such a huge backlog of problem to tackle. Still, what has been accomplished toward a modern society is remarkable. But now the Right wants to push back, roll back, second-guess, blame-game. It's all-out war from them to take us back to some all-but fascist fantasy they've dreamed up.

I have an educated hunch that if we had it to do over again, and the powers that be (the right-wing hawks, closet-racist/sexists, law-and-order uber alles types) had a heads-up about what would go down, things would have turned out far worse. Our story would look like something a psychotic, deranged Dickens might have written.

FOREWARNED: I am a boomer (1948). I served in the U. S. Navy from 1967 to 1971.
"A Generation of Sociopaths" was extremely disappointing even though I was fully willing to entertain the premise of this book.
Mr. Gibney presents his arguments as a litigator, and, as such, he may be expected to present facts supporting his argument while avoiding or eliding information which detracts from his argument. He also states, in his introduction, he "seeks to inform, persuade, and occasionally entertain", which is a very worthy goal.
However, Mr. Gibney's strident tone detracts from that argument and I felt some of his arguments were so misrepresentative as to border on falsehood. After reading, and re-reading the chapter, "Vietnam and the Emerging Boomer Identity", I was very offended by his conclusion that My Lai (March, 1968) was the result of a bunch of boomer G. I.'s running amok. Nam was certainly fought by boomers, but it was run by WW II and Korean War veterans, both in the military and the three branches of government. My Lai was an operation planned in the highest echelons of the 23rd Light Infantry Brigade ("Americal"). The HIGHEST ranking officer on the ground was Captain Ernest Medina, born in 1936. (By contrast, the first large scale engagement between American forces and uniformed NVA troops occurred in the Ia Drang Valley during November of 1965. Fought by approximately 450 troops of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry against 2,000 NVA, disaster was avoided because the Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Harold Moore was the first man on the ground and the last person out, three days later.)
Frankly, by the time I was almost through the chapter on taxes (around page 150) I was exhausted from the tone of the book and just skimmed the remaining pages. His overall arguments are long on correlations (with citations) between events and boomer proximity but short on proven causalities, while bludgeoning the reader with, "They're sociopaths! They're sociopaths".
Interestingly, after my military service, I felt for many years that the "Greatest Generation" had been a bunch of sociopaths (and, yes, that included my parents, whom I loved deeply). I have outgrown that attitude and optimistically presume Mr. Gibney will as well.
(the store EDITORS! Feel free to remove this paragraph if it is somehow not proper to do in a review.) If, like me, you are interested in how our country has reached this current state of affairs, I would heartily recommend "American Nations", by Colin Woodard.
Richard T. Childs