"For many a family, now that prosperity seems to be here, there's a baby just around the corner." This is how the April 2, 1941 issue of Business Week described the upcoming demographic phenomenon that would come to be known as the "baby boom." Between the years of 1946 and 1964, 78 million babies were born in the United States alone, and other countries also experienced their own baby booms following World War II. The baby-boom generation was the largest generation yet born on the planet. Other generations had received nicknames, such as the "lost generation" of the 1920s, but it took the label-obsessed media of the late twentieth century combined with the sheer size of the post-World War II generation to give the name "baby boomers" its impact.

Since those born at the end of the baby boom (1964) could, in fact, be the children of those born at the beginning...