Looking Through My Window

They're called the Silent Generation. Caught between the wartime exploits of the Greatest Generation and the civil rights movement of the Baby Boomers, history books portray those born between 1925 and 1945 as a lost generation who accomplished little in the fields of politics or culture.

The truth is much more complex. True, Silent Generation members were children during the Great Depression and World War II, but their world view was also formed by these events. And despite what some believe, she clarifies that the civil rights movement didn't spring into existence with the Baby Boomers pointing out that Martin Luther King, born in 1929, was a child of the Silent Generation, not the Boomers.

Even cultural events like the emergence of rock and roll owe their genesis to the Silent Generation. Chuck Berry was born in 1926, and Buddy Holly in 1936. Without such influential icons, it's doubtful we'd even have had the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

With "Looking Through My Window," Judith Holt blends the achievements of the Silent Generation with her personal experience growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. The result is an intriguing look at the achievements of a generation discounted by history.