The baby boom effectively created modern America, but what's next? How long will boomers hang on, to whom will the power eventually shift, how will aging boomers impact the health care system, how will political parties respond, and, in terms of identity, what will matter most: age, region, or ethnicity or race? Washington Post Bump national columnist has answers.

Washington Post columnist Bump illustrates his ability to distill complex and thought-provoking topics into digestible bites with this debut book. With a clear talent for pulling readers in and keeping them engaged, Bump provides a thorough breakdown of the post-WWII Baby Boom, focusing on changes caused by the sudden increase in population, from marketing to entertainment to death care. A particularly engrossing section, "A New American Politics," details the enormous impact of the Boomer generation on the American political system, and describes how future generations are offsetting that impact, breaking down this information with thoroughly researched statistics and charts. While the book can occasionally get bogged down in number soup, Bump breaks up the potential monotony of the material with easy quips ("Pedants will dispute the inclusion of people born early in 1946 or late in 1964 . . . but this is what pedants do and we've all learned to tune them out by now.") and simplified explanations and summaries. Critical but not insulting, The Aftermath has a lot to teach both the young and the young at heart.

Washington Post columnist Bump debuts with an insightful if overstuffed look at the baby boom generation and "the grip that it held and still holds on our national conversation." Complementing his original reportage with copious charts and graphs, Bump details the post-WWII "baby tsunami" that saw the average number of births increase from 2.9 million per year to just below four million, and investigates how certain characteristics of boomers, who skew whiter than the general population and are less likely to have a college degree, contribute to today's political polarization. Noting that schools built in the 1960s and '70s to meet the spike in student-age population are being converted into senior living centers, Bump also explores likely "shifts in power, status, and identity" as boomers' percentage of the overall population declines, noting a growth in Republican strength among working-class voters of color and increased assimilation among Hispanics, among other trends. More than 100 graphs visualize issues of race, political beliefs, education, and socioeconomic levels in novel ways, allowing Bump to draw counterintuitive insights, including that the depletion of Social Security resources "is the system working as intended and not representing some sudden collapse." Often, however, the data overwhelms and the arguments sprawl in diffuse directions. This intriguing survey bites off a little more than it can chew. (Jan.)

In-depth examination of the end of the baby boom and what it means for younger Americans. The U.S. is undergoing a great demographic shift. The population explosion of 1946-1964--which required California to open a new school every week through the 1950s, at enormous cost--resulted in a generation that vastly outnumbered its predecessors. Thus the 1960s youth culture, Woodstock, and yuppies. Now, writes Washington Post political columnist Bump, the numbers are changing significantly. "By 2025," he writes, "most boomers will be aged 65 or over; five years later, they all will [be]. In 2030, boomers are projected to make up about 17 percent of the population, the lowest density since 1955. And, of course, it descends from there." Many of those boomers cling desperately to power and privilege, often to the detriment of younger generations. There are complications in the picture, though. For one thing, the homegrown boomers were joined, half a century ago, by a huge influx of baby boomer immigrants, swelling their numbers and moderating the present conservative vote. For another, the supposed liberal wave that will supplant boomer conservatives will take time to arrive. While immigrants and their children will indeed make the U.S. a minority-majority country, it will take an extra decade to amass enough citizens with voting rights to make a difference. Regardless, things change, and "for many boomers, those changes seem to be very much not OK." Consequently, White nationalism and White fear will endure, troubling an already fractious politics. For all that, Bump notes, Trump carried boomers by only 3%, and the Republican brand is going to pay for it. As the author also shows, states demographically most like the future America went overwhelmingly for Biden, those most like the moribund past America, for Trump. Less crystal ball than projection of probabilities, but rewarding, provocative reading for students of demographic trends. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.