The Road to Whatever

From the Pulitzer Prize finalist a sharp and compassionate investigation of the root causes of the epidemic of drug abuse violence and despair among mainstream American teenagersIn the past few years it has become painfully clear that all is not well with the children of middle-class America. Beyond the shootings at Columbine hardly a day goes by without stories of drug use binge drinking fatal accidents and senseless suicides among middle-class adolescents. But the why of these tragedies has eluded us this groundbreaking book acclaimed sociologist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie rejects such predictable answers as TV violence permissiveness and inherent evil. Instead drawing on years of interviews he links this crisis to a pervasive culture of exclusion that has left young people facing an ever more unforgiving world. Currie describes a society in which severe punishment and zero tolerance of adolescent misbehavior have become the norm where tough love and medications have replaced engagement and guidance. Broadening his inquiry he dissects the changes in middle-class life that have enforced newly rigid divides between winners and losers and imposed an extraordinarily harsh culture-and not just on kids.Vivid compelling and deeply empathetic The Road to Whatever is a profound investigation of what has gone wrong for so many American teenagers and a stark indictment of a society that has lost the will-or the capacity-to care.