X Saves the World : How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking

**Read Jeff Gordinier's posts on the Penguin Blog**In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers"have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture-from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business. A shrewd and hilarious call to arms for the generation that fell between the cracks 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 its time for the slackers to rise up and take charge. Taking off from his controversial Details essay Has Generation X Already Peaked? Gordinier takes the reader along on an enthralling, eye-opening journeyfrom the expatriate garrets of Prague to the amped-up offices of dot-com San Francisco, from the muddy fields of Woodstock 94 to the celebrity-obsessed media machine of Us Weekly in 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 forgotand makes a convincing case for Gen X as maybe, secretly, the greatest generation 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. 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 it's time for the slackers to rise up and take charge. He takes the reader along on an eye-opening journey from Prague to San Francisco, from Woodstock '94 to Us Weekly, in 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.--From publisher description Read Jeff Gordinier's posts on the Penguin Blog In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers"have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture-from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business.