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.
Bump leaves no stone unturned as he takes a detailed look at the rise of the baby boom generation, its impact on the United States and the implications of its final days ... It would be easy to to get lost in the numbers as Bump takes a deep dive into as he looks at the cultural, political and demographic changes the country is going through. But there’s no shortage of charts and graphs throughout the book to help readers along the way.
The Aftermath is stuffed with enough charts and graphs to make any data-driven wonk swoon ... In between, in clear and lively prose, Bump delves into the changes the baby boom wrought on America ... I wish he’d given some space to second-wave feminism ... But he covers a great deal of ground and does it clearly.
Bump illustrates his ability to distill complex and thought-provoking topics into digestible bites ... While the book can occasionally get bogged down in number soup, Bump breaks up the potential monotony of the material with easy quips... and simplified explanations and summaries.
Insightful if overstuffed ... More than 100 graphs visualize issues... in novel ways, allowing Bump to draw counterintuitive insights ... Often, however, the data overwhelms and the arguments sprawl in diffuse directions. This intriguing survey bites off a little more than it can chew.
