X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking

Jammed in between the garish showboating of the baby boomers and the tabloid- trash stunts of the millennials, the discerning generation that gave us Yahoo and Nirvana has been quietly and inexorably changing the face of American culture. The men and women who came of age in the era of Lollapalooza have been underrepresented for too long in pop sociology, but reporter and essayist Jeff Gordinier argues that itas time for the slackers to rise up and take charge. Taking off from his controversial Details essay aHas Generation X Already Peaked?a Gordinier takes the reader along on an enthralling, eye-opening journeyafrom the expatriate garrets of Prague to the amped-up offices of dot-com San Francisco, from the muddy fields of Woodstock a94 to the celebrity-obsessed media machine of Us Weeklyain his quest to find the essence of X. Along the way he shows how Gen X innovations in art, comedy, technology, activism, and (gasp ) business have come to define the way we live now. A proud, accomplished, and unrepentant X-er, Jeff Gordinier writes with insight and biting wit about the generation that time forgotaand makes a convincing case for Gen X as maybe, secretly, the agreatest generationa of all. Like Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and The Tipping Point, X Saves the World flips conventional wisdom on its head and expertly captures the spirit of a strange and crucial era in American society.