A Prescription for the Soul

It’s July, 1963. A group of American teens—army brats—are living with their parents on a tiny military outpost in Verona, Italy. They spend the next six months hanging out in Venice, searching for answers. Tumultuous events are occurring back home—the civil rights march on Washington; the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama; and the assassination of the President—and they want to know what it will all mean for them and for their generation. Then, it’s July, 2007. The teens, now middle-aged Baby Boomers, are leading the life of 1-percenters on the Gold Coast of Connecticut. They spend the next six months debating how and why they came to be who they are. Tumultuous events are occurring on Wall Street; an epidemic of insider trading, the collapse of venerable banks, and the financial ruin of millions of Americans. Legions of social scientists have decried the faults of Baby Boomers, and A Prescription for the Soul doesn’t flinch from depicting them. Its portrait, however, is more balanced, more compassionate and ultimately more hopeful. It envisions a generation that is not yet done, that has yet to finish its turn, that still has the capacity to forge a great legacy.