Whenever we pick up something to read, we generally start by looking at the first few words or sentences to see if they grab our attention, and based on them we decide whether to keep reading. Beginnings, then, are important, both attracting readers and giving them some information about what's to come. When we get to the end of a text, we expect to be left with a sense of closure, of satisfaction—that the story is complete, our questions have been answered, the argument has been made. So endings are important, too. Tom Brokaw tapped an enormous reservoir of dormant sentiment in 1998 with the publication of The Greatest Generation
up to a point, you can sympathize with what Tom Brokaw is saying in "The Greatest Generation": that the American men and women who were born around 1920, who came of age in the Great Depression, who fought in World War II and who rebuilt the postwar world and passed the results on to succeeding generations, were extraordinary.
"It is a generation," Brokaw writes, "that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically and culturally because of its sacrifices." He continues, "It is a generation of towering achievement and modest…show more content… Equally you suspect that somewhere in the United States today are people facing challenges nearly as daunting as Brokaw's wartime generation did -- challenges of poverty, of prejudice, of cultural displacement -- and facing them as heroically as Brokaw's
