The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, the same year that Tony Blair’s Labour Party adopted the D:Ream song “Things Can Only Get Better” as the anthem of their (ultimately successful) campaign. I often wonder if I feel nostalgic for the 1990s only because that was the decade of my childhood. But it does seem to me, admittedly across a gulf of time, that a lot of people really did feel then that things could only get better. For all of their occasional darkness, the Harry Potter books reflect the hopeful vision distinctive to the time and place of their creation. And the Harry Potter generation imbibed exactly the message that they were supposed to imbibe: that liberalism will always triumph over the forces of evil. Young people just don’t think like that anymore. Honestly, I don’t blame them.
— “The Harry PotterGeneration Needs to Grow Up,” Louise Perry in a Guest Essay for The New York Times
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