Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

By Anthony M. Casale and Philip Lerman

Andrews and McNeel

$16.95, 233 pp.

THIS week has seen an orgy of Woodstock nostalgia. The three-day-long music festival that ended 20 years ago today was the last major event of the 1960s, and it supposedly defined a generation.

Now that this one is past us, hopefully we can stop marking these silly 20-year anniversaries. Baby Boomers have reveled in these memorials to their youth, remembering the '60s as a time of watershed events and unbridled idealism.

It is only natural to feel nostalgic about the events of one's youth, but somehow I don't think members of my generation will get misty-eyed nothing the 20th anniversary of, say, the Shuttle explosion or the Live Aid concert.

But the '60s were radically different, and the generation that came of age then has always felt it was something special. More than a demographic phenomenon, it was the generation that was going to pick up a decaying world, invigorate it with a shot of energy and mold it to its liking.

Of course, they never did. The Baby Boomers have been the decisive voters putting three straight Republican administrations in office. The slide of the Flower Children of the '60s into hedonistic complacency is well-documented.

But many cannot seem to shed the nagging feeling that they went wrong somewhere, that they have betrayed the ideals of their youth. This is exactly the kind of emotion Anthony M. Casale and Phillip Lerman tap into in their new book Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: The Fall and Rise of the Woodstock Generation.

THE authors have put together a feel-good anthology, tracing the "Woodstock Generation" from the concert itself to the present, and even projecting it into the next decade.

The book's premise is that the generation became splintered and cynical in the '70s, but now that it has achieved status and wealth, the Woodstock Generation is poised for a comeback and a resurgence of idealism. If anyone can have it all, it is the Woodstock Generation, the chosen people.

However, Casale and Lerman are utterly unconvincing in supporting their thesis. Their attempt amounts to nothing more than another salve applied to the sore consciences of the jaded children of the '60s.

For evidence of this impending rebirth of vigor and social activism, the authors point to a motley hodge-podge of completely unrelated events. They cite the politicization of comic strips like "Bloom County" and "Cathy." They herald the social conscience of Rain Man and the The Good Mother.

They tell a story about some guy named Ralph who demanded that his Wall Street firm hire more "good minority people."