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.