The Aftermath is an assessment of how the baby boom created modern America, and where power, wealth, and politics will shift as the boom ends. Philip Bump fits numbers into a narrative about who we are (including what "we" really means), how we vote, where we live, what we buy--and what predictions we can make with any confidence. We know what will happen eventually to the baby boomers. What we don't know is how the boomer legacies might reshape the country one final time.
If you’re looking for the highly detailed, data-driven, definitive story of how baby boomers changed America and a little forecasting of what might come next, Philip Bump’s The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America is it ... Bump...offers...a deep and complicated interrogation of his subject, often challenging his own assumptions, with detailed forecasts of what could lie ahead — all illustrated with charts and visuals to drive a huge amount of data home ... No one can accuse Bump of sparing any details (and he certainly has not held back on the charts, which show up in abundance and which I found quite useful) ... Bump is cautiously optimistic but clear-eyed about the weight of the work ahead.
There are so many bars, squiggles, arrows, circles, dots, numbers and pictograms within these pages — 128 charts in total — that poring over them might make that hypothetical word person feel a little cross-eyed and frantic ... You get the feeling Bump could diagram even a marital spat ... He is trying to debunk closely held beliefs about the boomers as a voting, spending and ideological bloc ... Dividing populations into age blocs is of limited utility, except for pollsters and planners — the young boomers needed more schools, and soon they’ll need more eldercare — but also a source of entertainment, a great American pastime like any other typology.
