ABSTRACT
A sociological generation is made up of people born into sequential birth cohorts who gain a sense of collective identity by going through the same dramatic historical events. The Depression sociological generation comprises birth cohorts of Americans born between 1911 and 1938; these individuals’ collective identity was shaped by the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, McCarthyism, and the emergence of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War as center stage societal issues. Those in this sociological generation were educated during the 1930s at the earliest and in the mid-1950s at the latest. Their most signifi cant intellectual contributions were usually made between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s.
