Ever since they snatched up more than 1.6 million hardcover copies of David McCullough's treatise on John Adams, boomers can't seem to get enough of the Founding Fathers.

Joseph J. Ellis' Pulitzer-winning "Founding Brothers" topped the hardcover and paperback charts for more than two years. In 2006, just in time for the "quintessential American's" tercentenary, six books celebrated the life of Benjamin Franklin (Gordon Wood, Joyce Chaplin, Edmund Morgan, Stacy Schiff and David Waldstreicher) with Walter Isaacson's effort luxuriating on the best-seller list for 26 weeks. Ron Chernow's "Alexander Hamilton" and Ellis' "His Excellency: George Washington" also cashed in big time last year.

Currently, the availability of published 18th century letters, journals and papers have enabled various scribes (not all touting Ivy League academic credentials but more than adequately endowed with superb storytelling skills) to supply a bumper crop of Revolutionary-era biographies.

You see, boomers, all 78 million of them, have enjoyed something of a chokehold on American culture ever since Bob Dylan floated the notion, "the answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind." Furthermore, middle-aged boomer-Americans, who currently comprise 31 percent of the population, don't appear likely to release their viselike grip any time soon.

The boomer's leading edge came of age on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, the war in Vietnam and a period of unprecedented prosperity. The second wave arrived during Watergate, the oil embargo, gas lines, runaway inflation and vastly reduced economic expectations.

It is interesting to note that Newsweek's Malcolm Jones, who researched the youthful reading habits of those born between 1946 and 1964 for his "Boomer Files," reports that very few of the tomes boomers claim to have devoured during adolescence were published before 1950. "Given the choice," he concluded, "we weren't the least bit interested in what tradition had to tell us."

In addition, during the 1960s, when boomers were overcrowding classrooms across the fruited plain, historians such as Howard Zinn ("A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present") shoved aside long-established "great man" narratives to make room on the historical stage for laborers, housewives and slaves. Yet "giving a voice to the voiceless," for all its nobility and idealism, frankly fizzled.

Boomer grads seemed to take Sam Cooke's words to "Wonderful World (Don't Know Much)" to heart instead. Even though they considered themselves Founding Father-like revolutionaries, they were, at least academically, more like current college students, who, according to an Intercollegiate Studies Institute study, don't know much at all about history.

The leading political figures of late 18th century America, on the other hand, were not only acquainted with the output of the greatest European minds of the day but also the ancient Western world as well.

Kenneth C. Davis came to the rescue of history-phobic boomers 13 years ago with his "anti-textbook." By shattering myths and employing humor, anecdotal material and contemporary references, his "Don't Know Much About History" spent 35 consecutive weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and is still available via Amazon.com in print/audio formats.

At time of release, People Magazine gushed, "Reading [Davis] is like returning to the classroom of the best teacher you ever had." More than 1.5 million Americans have availed themselves of the opportunity.

In addition, on the boob-tube front, the award-winning History Channel was launched in 1995. These days, more than 91 million Nielsen subscribers have thrown open a video window into the compelling world "where the past comes alive." It should come as no great surprise that boomers make up the bulk of the History Channel audience.

It appears that the 21st century has sparked a period of retrospection for boomers now large and in charge. The war on terror, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the perplexing problem of nuclear proliferation, the mounting odds favoring global conflict as well as George Santayana ("those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it") are propelling boomers back in time.

On one hand, the opportunistic Richard Brookhiser, with biographies of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Adams family and Gouverneur Morris under his belt, recently came out with an underwhelming book-length Q&A ("What Would the Founders Do?") that purports to deliver the 18th century perspective on everything from stem-cell research to Hurricane Katrina.

On the other hand, Isaacson simply allowed his subject, Ben Franklin, to instruct as both the creator and personification of the American as upright, industrious and inventive. The familiarity of this image, albeit, at times, as spin-happy and self-serving as Franklin's own fabricated facade, should comfort self-doubting boomers.

You see, Franklin, America's "first unabashed public-relations expert," didn't just sell Yankee ingenuity to the rest of the world; he first sold it to us.

Beverly Kelley, Ph.D., who writes every other Monday for The Star, is an author ("Reelpolitik" and "Reelpolitik II") and professor in the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. Visit http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog/. Her e-mail address is Kelley@clunet.edu .