A certain detached agnosticism.

What we have bequeathed to the country is an innate moderation, a skepticism about movements and ideologies, an agnosticism about the quarrels that summon intense passions in present-day liberals and conservatives.

Richard Pells, The Chronicle Review.

By now we know well about what has been called the Greatest Generation, those who survived the Depression of the 1930s and went on to sacrificial victory in World War II.

We've watched the pig in the python phenomenon of the Baby Boomers, that generation born to the returning soldiers and sailors of World War II. Moving through each of their developmental milestones, this huge cohort has defined one aspect of American life after another, from teenage rebellion to family nesting to retirement.

And for us born between the Greatest and the Boomers? For us who came into this world between 1939 and 1945? Who are we, and what impact have we had on our culture?

Here's an example of the larger view of cultural events I particularly value, an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Some of the icons of our age group?

• Film world:
• Francis Ford Coppola
• Martin Scorsese
• George Lucas
• Al Pacino
• Robert DeNiro
• Music:
• Joan Baez
• Bob Dylan
• Paul Simon
• Art Garfunkel
• Barbra Streisand
• Journalism:
• Bob Woodward
• Carl Bernstein
• Tom Brokaw

Committed to fairness and justice, devoted to a world that brings out our better natures, speaking for the common good and for treating all creatures decently. I would call this generation deep and thoughtful.

Bob Dylan, that troubadour for a generation of anti-war protesters, a non-ideologue?

Even during the 1960s, when we listened to the songs of Dylan or Baez, we were more interested in their music than their politics.

And I would suggest, look at the course of Bob Dylan's music and life since 1965. Is this a radical political existence? Hardly.

We were rarely activists or ideologues. And that emotional reserve makes us, even in the midst of America's current crises, unruffled, temperate in conversation and behavior, unmoved by the strident crusades on Fox News or in the left-wing blogosphere. Given our craving to be pragmatic and cool, we have tried to define America's centrist political and cultural style for the past half-century.

And so I continue, well into my seventh decade on this marvelous journey of life.