Includes index.

Generations -- Times of their lives -- Ordinary people -- Thomas and Eileen Broderick -- Charles O. Van Gorder, MD -- Wesley Ko -- James and Dorothy Dowling -- Rev. Harry Reginald "Reg" Hammond -- Lloyd Kilmer -- Gordon Larsen -- Romeo club: retired old men eating out -- John "Lefty" Caulfield -- Home front -- Charles Briscoe -- Dorothy Haener -- Heroes -- Bob Bush -- Joe Foss -- Leonard "Bud" Lomell -- Women in uniform and out -- Colonel Mary Hallaren -- General Jeanne Holm -- Three women and how they served -- Marion Rivers Nittel -- Claudine "Scottie" Lingelbach -- Alison Ely Campbell -- Margaret Ray Ringenberg -- Mary Louise Roberts Wilson -- Shame -- Martha Settle Putney -- Johnnie Holmes -- Luis Armijo -- Nao Takasugi -- Norman Mineta -- Love, marriage, and commitment -- John and Peggy Assenzio -- Dumbos -- Gaylord and Carrie Lee Nelson -- Jeanette Gagne Norton -- Daphne Cavin -- Famous people -- George Bush -- Ben Bradlee -- Art Buchwald -- Andy Rooney -- Julia Child -- Gertrude Belle "Trudy" Elion -- Chesterfield Smith -- Al Neuharth -- Maurice "Hank" Greenberg -- Arena -- Mark Hatfield -- Robert Dole -- Daniel Inouye -- Caspar Weinberger -- Lloyd Cutler -- George Shultz -- Arthur Schlesinger -- Ed Guthman -- Twilight of their lives.

In this book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values - duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today.