Contemporary American Authors rate the Best Books of the Past 25 years

[Ghoulish Delight]

The NPR report noted that the top 5 authors were all born in the 30s. The 30s happen to be one of only two decades (the 1810s being the other) in which no US President was born. The guy who conducted the survey admitted he was just speculating, but didn't consider these 2 facts coincidence. With people born in the 30s coming of age in the 50s, an era marked by its lack of public expression, he surmises that the kind of ambition that would normally lead to political aspirations in a lot of people instead was turned inward, producing people who expressed themselves in the much more private forum of writing.