The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence

An energetic, provocative, and much-needed investigation of the root causes of the epidemic of drug abuse, violence, and despair among middle-class American teenagers (Los Angeles Times)

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed sociologist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie draws on years of interviews to offer a profound investigation of what has gone wrong for so many mainstream American adolescents. Rejecting such predictable answers as TV violence, permissiveness, and inherent evil, Currie links this crisis to a pervasive culture of exclusion fostered by a society in which medications trump guidance and a punitive zero tolerance approach to adolescent misbehavior has become the norm. Broadening his inquiry, he dissects the changes in middle-class life that stratify the world into winners and losers, imposing an extraordinarily harsh culture--and not just on kids.
Vivid, compelling, and deeply empathetic, The Road to Whatever is a stark indictment of a society that has lost the will--or the capacity--to care.

Author: Elliott Currie
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 12/27/2005
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780805080001

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 05/01/2005 pg. 1

About the Author

Elliott Currie is the author of Confronting Crime, Reckoning, and Crime and Punishment in America. An internationally recognized authority on youth and crime, he is a professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine.