Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation Is Remaking America
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Rutgers University Press

It’s On Us:Millennial Momentum

Being told you are the generation to change the world is an interesting experience. It is especially interesting when it is backed up by hundreds of years of generational research. GuentherMedia just took a trip to the bay area to hear Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais talk about their latest book, Millennial Momentum. As you might guess, it is about the Millennial generation (born roughly 1982-2003) and how we are the generation that will bring this country out of its funk. It is a fascinating book loaded with research about a cycle of generations that appears to be a pattern in this country since its inception.

Now candidly, I was a bit of an easy sell since the book was all about how my generation was going to change the world. However, the majority of the boomers and x-ers in the room, though some skeptical at first, largely embraced this message by the end. Both authors had an amazingly comprehensive understanding of the research. They went as far as predicting what type of health care system is more likely as Millennials begin to dominate the voting age population. You will have to pick up the book to learn its other pearls of wisdom and predictions.

If nothing else, this book is a glimmer of hope in a very tough time. It paints a bright picture for the future of the United States, where giving back to your country and community, pragmatism, and quality are the unifying characteristics. At a time when little seems to be progressing, and the government seems more dysfunctional than ever, a generation that is defined by their desire to work for the good of one another seems to be just what we need as a nation.

Only time will tell whether all of these predictions come true. It is hard to estimate how big an impact things like the Internet and access to information have on generational theory. However, the early information we have on the Millennial Generation seems to say that the cycle is still on track, as Millenials are already exhibiting the characteristics that make us more like our great-grandparents than our parents. So for progressives, hope remains in the form of the young people of our country, and lucky for us, history is on our side.

— By Sam Holman, Guenther Media, January 27, 2012

Glimpse the Future With "Millennial Momentum"

"Crowd-sourced government? Even though Winograd and Hais note that Millennials are generally more aligned with the Democratic party, they make it clear that the Millennials’ desire to solve societal challenges and collaborate does not favor the status quo. They will push for increased group participation and transparency, suggesting that both parties will be into new territory in coming years."
— By Chris Carbone,Futurist, Director, Innovaro, Inc. November 4, 2011

"Which path the United States ultimately takes will be determined by the Millennial Generation's willingness to engage in a vast civic endeavor to remake America and its institutions and the willingness of the rest of the country to follow its lead." This bold statement opens Millennial Momentum, the follow up to Millennial Makeover, which successfully predicted the political potential of the "Me" generation—Americans born between 1982 and 2003—to effect change in the 2008 election. That title was included in the New York Times' ten favorite books that year.
Co-authors Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are both fellows with NDN, a Washington, DC-based think tank, and the New Policy Institute. Due to their accurate prediction of the Millennials to mobilize and affect the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Winograd and Hais have become the leading authorities on predicting the potential of what they call the next "civic generation" in America.
Embracing the theory of generational cycles developed by social historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, the authors use compelling demographic survey data to predict that Millennials are poised to "be the country's next great generation." It is refreshing that the authors acknowledge a viewpoint counter to mainstream media voices like Tom Brokaw and Stephen Bannon, whose assessments do not embrace the same optimism.
Hais and Winograd's methodology includes survey data, personal interviews, and popular texts, and most convincingly, an astute and well-presented analysis of generational trends situated in an impressive framework of US political history. Within this history, readers can identify their "generational type"—idealist or reactive, civic or adaptive—and trace their contribution to the forty-year "turnings" the author's identify as generation-driven socio-economic movements.
Their claim that the Millennials will lead us into a new "civic ethos" is convincing, largely due to the fact that by 2020 they will represent one of every three adults. Additional compelling data on Millennials includes examples of volunteerism, community service, and entrepreneurship supported by the success of such programs as Teach for America and the 8,000-person-strong Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, a group of forward-thinking Millennials who launched the Think 2040 project in 2010. If the Think 2040 project's core values—"a deeply held concern for equity, respect for the individual and society, and a belief in community empowerment and self-determination"—are representative of politically active Millennials, as Winograd and Hais argue, surely many older Americans might align with the younger visionaries, as these values represent the core of what many voters had hoped for after the 2008 election.
— Kai White  ForeWord Review

The Millennial Generation
The new publishing sensation, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais's Millennial Momentum, is working its way up the best-seller lists with its analysis of the Millennials — this huge generation of Americans, over 80 million strong, whose influence in the 2008 election gave Obama a mandate for change. This is the generation born from 1982-2003, in other words the oldest are just 29, and more of them, over half, will be able to vote in 2012.
The authors refer to this huge generation, which will be 34 percent of the population in 2020, as the "civic" generation, as opposed, for example, of the so-called idealist generation of the '60s — the generation that started out to change the world, but who turned on and tuned out by the crisis of the Vietnam War. The Beatles gave them "Let It Be" and as a generation their idealism melted away.
Having delivered the 2008 election to Obama, the Millennials are in a position to do the same in 2012. The question is, will they? The change they voted for was nearly destroyed by the financial catastrophe generated by the ME generation on Wall Street, who in many cases are the parents of the Millennials.
The only positive outcome of this continuing crisis is a clear and dramatic demonstration of what happens to a country when a privileged few decide to take what they can get and let the rest of us be damned. Our founders knew that if we didn't all hang together then we would hang separately. The Millennials know this and they are using the technological innovations of the past 20 years to transform themselves and the country, binding us together as never before.
As an Emerson scholar, one of a very few and little known company, I have watched this nation he loved so much suffer from its terrible errors and daring accomplishments. Emerson said throughout his work that "America is opportunity," and he knew that it was the task of a central government to create a level playing field for every American so that opportunities were there for those who worked hard and played by the rules.
The Tea Party Republicans don't believe in a level playing field for all Americans. For them, America is freedom, that is, freedom from any responsibility for others or policies which create opportunity and support, like health care for everyone. As Winograd and Hais point out, however, the Millennials are civic-minded and are searching for ways to change and improve how government and institutions meet the challenges we face.
It is clear that this dynamic generation of young Americans will change America, and they will do it in dramatic fashion. Those if us set in our ways and afraid of change will have to step aside, hold on and adjust. But, and this is crucial, if the Millennials stay home in November 2012, the momentum that Winograd and Hais are championing will grind to a halt, or, to use a more millennial term, suffer a catastrophic system failure.
—Richard Geldard— Huffington Post Books 

 In this timely analysis of demographic data, Winograd and Hais (Millennial Makeover) examine the habits, values, and desires of the generation born between 1982 and 2003. Turning away from the apathetic and introverted attitudes of Generation X, the disillusioned idealism of the boomer generation, and the pragmatism of the silent generation, Millennials most resemble the G.I. generation, which supported the New Deal and oversaw a radical reshaping of government's role in improving quality of life in America. Like the G.I.s, Millennials are a "civic generation," one that responds to fear, uncertainty, and doubt by attempting to better the world through public service, personal engagement, and demand for a transparent and responsive government. The most racially diverse and ideologically tolerant population the U.S. has ever known, Millennials are also the best networked group of humans in history. Believing that every consumer choice, every vote, every blog post and tweet matters, young people come of age expecting to be heard and to make change. Although still gaining momentum, Millennial thinking has already proved itself powerful—the networked grassroots organization that elected Barack Obama is the book's most persuasive example. Though general readers might be put off by the academic quality of Winograd and Hais's prose, the book offers important insights into the dynamic, interdependent forces that will shape America's future.
—Publishers Weekly

"Winograd and Hais have emerged as the country's best, and most solidly supported, analysts of the emergent Millennial Generation. Leaders of both parties-and forward-looking businesses -need to study this book for a unique look into America's evolving future."
— Joel Kotkin, author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050

"The authors offer a wonderfully persuasive picture of America's future-by providing a penetrating and well-researched portrait of the rising Millennial Generation that is beginning to define that future."
— Neil Howe, co-author of Generations and The Fourth Turning

 "Extremely useful, readable and important...only recent book I have been eager to blurb,
 it's THAT good."
— Warren Bennis