In the 1930s, a cohort of professional human scientists coalesced around a common and particular understanding of objectivity as the foundation of legitimate knowledge, and of fieldwork as the pathway to objectivity. Shared experiences reinforced their identity as a generation, building a collective cognitive framework, identity, and interpersonal network. This book is the first collective biography of this cohort, evocatively described by one contemporary as the men of one age. By the 1960s they themselves came to understand the limitations of these values, and the 1968 student movement saw an all-encompassing attack on objectivity itself.