Obedient Sons: The Discourse of Youth and Generations in American Culture, 1630-1860

Examines the concepts of youth and generations from the early colonial period through the formation of young men's voluntary associations and the Young America phenomenon of mid-19th century. An epilogue overviews the discourse of youth and generations since 1860. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Lost Generation. Beat Generation. Generation Gap. Generation X. In contemporary American popular culture, such terms have been commonplace -- a shorthand way of defining the spirit of an era by distinguishing the younger generation from its elders.

Yet as Glenn Wallach shows in this imaginative and revealing study, the meaning of the concepts of "youth" and "generations" has not always been the same. During the early colonial period, the Puritans established a distinctive way of talking about generations that emphasized continuity rather than conflict. Later echoed during the Great Awakening and the American Revolution, this language was at once conservative in motivation and activist in vision, investing the country's young men with a special responsibility for building a new society that preserved traditional values.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, figurative as well as literal sons of the founding fathers expressed this sense of generational obligation in young men's voluntary associations and organizations promoting American art and literature, culminating in the "Young America" phenomenon of the 1840s and 1050s.

By revealing the shifting meaning of language over time, included its gendered implications, Obedient Sons challenges historians to rethink many long-standing assumptions about the way Americans have understood their relationship to the past and future.