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Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

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"Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation," by Neil Howe and William Strauss, attempts to explain the generation of people born between 1982 and 2002. The authors label this group the Millennials; according to the authors' model, the Millennials follow Generation X (born between 1961 and 1981), the Boomers (1943-60), the Silent Generation (1925-42), and others in a chain of definable generations that stretches back for centuries.

The authors look at some of the cultural forces that have shaped (and, increasingly, are being shaped by) the Millennials. They consider the increasing emphasis on multiculturalism; the impact of "Kinderpolitics," or child-centered politics, on Millennial lives; the school uniform movement; Millennial pop-culture favorites like Harry Potter and Pokemon; the "boy band" surge; the impact of the Columbine massacre; and more.

Ultimately, the authors make some bold predictions. They claim that the Millennials will likely become the latest in a series of "hero generations" that occur every few generations (the last hero generation, according to the authors, was the G.I. Generation, born 1901-1924). They also predict a "Millennial makeover" of American popular culture in the first decade of the 21st century.

The book is fascinating and informative. But the authors' essential conceptual model and conclusions are problematic. It seems to me that the whole "generational" model is an artificial (and, at worst, stereotype-driven) way to break people into easily-labeled groups. In fact, I think things are a lot more complex than the authors seem to believe.

Still, the book is engrossing reading. It was actually recommended to me by a distinguished U.S. Army officer who suggested that the book could give military leaders insights into the wave of young people currently entering the armed services. I believe that many other professionals could also benefit from a critical reading of this book.

The book is full of fascinating sidebar quotes from many sources: periodicals ("U.S. News and World Report," "Spin," etc.); government officials and politicians (Donna Shalala, Bob Dole, etc.); film dialogue ("Cruel Intentions," "Rushmore," etc.); song lyrics (Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle," Hanson's "MMMBop," etc,); TV show dialogue ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Malcolm in the Middle," etc.); cultural critics and commentators (Camille Paglia, Bill Maher, etc.); and other sources.

Throughout the book are funny and incisive cartoons by R.J. Matson. Charts and poll data also add to the book's appeal. Unfortunately, the lack of an index is a negative point. "Millennials Rising" is not without its problems, but it's definitely worth reading.

I've always been fascinated by social history, and generally enjoy reading about societal trends, so I found this book to be interesting on the surface. The book is entertaining (in small doses!), but there are some deeper problems, both in its assumptions and conclusions.

First, to really buy into what this book claims, one must in some sense buy into the authors' ideas about generations. To be sure, social phenomena are not linear, but it is a stretch to assume that they are cyclical in the sense of "great generations". Many of the events that influence different "generations", actually are multi-generational, encompassing time scales of a century or more.

Despite the idea that each generation makes its own future, or has it made for them largely by their parents or their place in a historical cycle, much of what takes place is on a much larger and longer scale and there is no evidence that this is really cyclical in any sense. This book has little to say about these, instead dwelling on grandparents, parents and children and the idea of cyclical generations.

The other aspect of this book that I find troubling is the combination of facts,trends, and broad assumptions that are not really well verified being taken as some sort rigorous analysis. It is more theme oriented journalism with lots of citations, interviews and "factoids". It as close to a feature in a Sunday magazine as to any real in depth analysis.

Prospective readers should also be aware of the background of these authors. Although they are referred to in various reviews as "historians", their backgrounds are closer to what might be termed "Republican policy wonks", who now run a consulting business based on identifying and advising on generational trends.

Why does this matter? First off most of the interviews were conducted in Fairfax County, VA. By no strech of the imagination is this representative of the Earth's or even the USA's youth population. Second, if one has read their other books or heard them speak, one becomes aware of their antagonism to cultural trends that might not fit the picture of "hope" painted in this book. Finally, the whole concept of "generations" such as "Xers and Boomers" is largely a marketing and pop culture phenomenon that frequently "fits" the way a horroscope does. Make a few suggestions, present some "proof" and voila, an instant read on history and the future.

America's obsession with pop culture, its children, the future and other themes of books such as these make for ocassional interesting reading, if one takes them with a large grain of salt. They trade largely in broad pictures that don't always hold up to closer scrutiny. They frequently ignore more sophisticated analysis and alternative explanations. To elevate them to something more is a serious mistake.

They are as much a product of the current culture as a study of it. As with much pop culture, they invent and reinvent stereotypes that take on mythical stature. This book is to be taken with a grain of salt.

While I do not find today's youth a particularly boisterous or "bad kid" generation, this book goes beyond assessment of the trends and into self-convincing in a very deceptive way. There are indeed trends out there, some positive and some negative (which is partly a matter of opinion anyway), but Strauss and Howe have gone a little too far this time in seeing what they want to see.

One reviewer notes: "One thing is that the authors know what to look for by using their generational theory. As a result of this, he [obtained] results that would surprise most people, but would not surprise anyone familiar with their previous works." Ironically, this is exactly an example of why this cannot be considered a good book. The two authors knew what they wanted to write about youth long before writing this book, in fact wanting to write whatever would fit a set of predictions about this crop of youth that these authors have had for a decade. Rather than "looking for" wholesome youth, they need to look at the whole picture of how things are.

But William Strauss and Neil Howe look for and write what they want to find. Deceptively one-sided quotes fill the pages with statements from youth who fit their preconceived paradigm and adults who observe something in youth that fits their paradigm. They had to wade through all the quotes from young speakers who fit a different paradigm. Why these teens? Why did they conduct surveys of their own county in Virginia and not some other county?

What these two authors don't mention in the book is that they pick and choose from surveys rather than showing the whole picture of the generation. For instance, they quote a CBS survey to persuade the reader of the government/parental trust of this generation ("Half trust the government to do what's right.") Why this survey, and not one of the Newsweek, Monitoring the Future or other surveys that showed more cynicism about government or a less two-dimensionally rosy picture of relationships with parents than this book would have you believe? Substance abuse, even though lower than Boomer youth rates, is higher than that of generation X, and the authors' attempt to deal with this inconvenient statistic fails to convince me. (Curiously, the same CBS survey they cite on government/parental trust has very low figures for use of ANY drug among teenagers, even less than the statistics the authors produce on substancce abuse. Hmmmm.)

They write that this is entirely an era in which the benefits of youth and children are paramount and trump all else, yet avoid mentioning the fall of school taxes or university funding to the kids who supposedly need it most, and outright deny that cheating has risen in schools, where elsewhere it has.

At one point they state, "Look closely at youth indicators and you'll see that Millennial attitudes and behaviors represents a sharp break from Generation X". Ironically, it shows a continuation of Generation X. They neglect to mention that X was the same generation that reversed the Boomer SAT slide and agrees, rather than conflicts with, these students' high scores. On the other hand, the substance abuse rates of these youth represent a turn away from Generation X's youth in the "wrong" direction -- they are un-X-like by using drugs more!

Rather than showing a balanced picture, Strauss and Howe have merely written what they wanted to see, looking for rather than looking at, and presented the reader with a rehash if their precxonceived ideas of youth. This has merely reached cult-live levels of self-assuring.

Millennials Rising, in short, is an excellent start of the examination of the next American generation, the Millennials, born 1982 to the present. Neil Howe and William Strauss are the two preeminent generational historians writing today. In their groundbreaking work Generations, they meticulously researched American generations all the way back to the 16th century. They followed this up with an examination of Generation X in 13th Gen that helped explain the why and how of an entire generation that had previously been all but ignored. Then in Fourth Turning the authors advanced their generational theory to convincingly outline a model that explains the cyclical nature of generations.

Now, with Millennials Rising they are embarking on something that hasn't been done before, namely charting the course of an entire generation as it grows up. They have done an excellent job of defining the generation as a whole, rather than examining individuals within it. They identify the major trends, the dominant themes, that make Millennials what they are as a group (and they are nothing, if not a group). Then they give concrete examples that back up the theory. Rather than shoehorn teens into a preconceived stereotype, the way many marketers do today, Howe and Strauss show how these preconceptions don't fit and build a new model for the next generation. Where Boomers were the generation of feeling and interpersonal reflection, Millennials are more focused on the rational and the outer world. Where Xers became individualized, thanks to (un)parenting that made them define themselves with little formal structure, Millennials entire lives are structured by an entire nation of parents with an emphasis on team work and group action. The authors have highlighted these differences in past books, and do so again here. And they go one step further, expanding the model to show the unique place in history that the Millennials hold and how that shapes them as a group, and forms them also as individual members of that group.

Having a fair amount of interaction with high school age kids the past few years, I have noticed myself that today's teens are vastly different from those of my own high school in the mid 1980s (admittedly my examination is less precise and my sample a whole lot smaller). And while not everything that that authors write about is exactly right on, I can see clearly that their overall approach is on target . Again, it's the big picture that is important and no one else writing on generational issues today paints that picture as clearly as Howe and Strauss.

Who should read this book? Millennials Rising is a must read for any serious historian, and anyone interested in generational issues. The book will be a boon to those who are looking towards the future, such as policy makers both in the public and private sectors. Anyone who is interested in trends in politics, pop culture, or society as a whole would be well served to read Millennials Rising. Even if you don't agree with all of it, you will find it interesting and thought provoking. The book is well written, not overly pedantic or boringly academic. Rather it reads quickly, with lots of visual aids such as charts, info graphs and some great cartoons. Like 13th Gen, Millennials Rising has numerous quotes along the sides of each page that both reflect the theory and raise important questions for the reader to keep in mind.

I can't recommend Millenials Rising strongly enough. Read it for yourself and you will see why generational theory is becoming one of the hottest areas of social science. You won't be disappointed. (My name is Rob Crowther, ***********************)

Millennials Rising is the latest book in the generational series by the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, focusing this time on the generation born after X.

For those not already familiar with the authors' theory, Strauss and Howe are two authors who began writing about generations in 1991. They wrote the book Generations, which introduced a theory that generations fall into four re-cycling types, and each type comes of age during a different kind of era, or "turning". The Silent Generation is of the "adaptive" type, for instance, passive, gentle, and in tune with their emotions, and came of age during the Golden Age of postwar America. The Baby Boomers, remembered for their "Awakening" in the 1960s, are of the "idealist" type, concerned with God and spirituality and impassioned about what they believe in, but inclined to change during life (from hippie to the current "Just say no" control freak). Generation X, which they named the Thirteenth Generation, is of the "reactive" type, being alienated, street-smart and materialistic, without a feeling of need to be "loyal" to anything, coming of age during the 1980s and 1990s. They then first identified everyone born since 1982 as the "Millennial Generation", and predicted back in 1991 that it would be grow up to be optimistic, hard-working and clean-cut, just like the G.I. Generation that fought World War II, going back to the "civic" type generation before the Silent Generation. In 1993 they published the book Thirteenth Gen, which specialized in Generation X and why they are the way they are. In their third book, The Fourth Turning, they went back to the whole theory and writing about all the generations. They also changed the archetype names from adaptive, idealist, reactive and civic to Artist, Prophet, Nomad and Hero. Strauss and Howe wrote in this book about an upcoming era of epic battle and mass destruction, much like the one in which the G.I. Generation came of age. They then predicted the Millennial Generation would form the role of Heroes during the coming crisis, and they would lower teen pregnancy rates, stop using drugs, serve the United States, in uniform even, and desist with using profanity.

So then in 2000 they put out this book, Millennials Rising. In this one the authors try to explain the Millennial Generation (my generation). Millennials Rising attempts to identify who we, the most ethnically diverse generation in American history as they note, are. In Millennials Rising they write about this generation's Boomer parents and their influence on the Millennial Generation, as well as the kind of world in which this generation is growing up (which S&H think of as hundreds of television channels, SUV lifestyles, rappers who swear, and people who smack each other on TV). The book states that Millennials want to work together in teams, believe the people in authority know more about right and wrong than they do, are enthusiastic about learning and going to school, are loved and protected by their parents, achieve great things in school and will achieve great things in the future, and lest we forget, always want to exude that "positive peer pressure" on their fellow Millennials.

The obviously leads to the question, then, is the generation really optimistic, hard-working and clean-cut just as they say? Consider this: Only 28% of high school seniors say that the work they get assigned at school is "meaningful", only 21% describe their courses as "interesting" and still barely over a third, 39%, believe that what they do in school will have any relation to their success later in life. The generation was supposed to be enthusiastic about learning. The Millennial Generation also rapidly increased drug use, especially pot, from the level at which Generation X was using them in its teens, as even the authors themselves note.

S&H portray the world of edgy entertainment, such as television shows, movies and music, as a Zoroastrian battle. In popular music, for instance, artists are described by extremes that either represent the alleged Millennial values or go actively against them -- on one side, artists like Eminem, Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson, on the other, boy bands and Britney Spears and her imitators, along with such second-tier bands as the S Club 7. They do not deal with the Millennial interest in bands that lie somewhere in between the two. For instance, Blink-182 is just about the biggest band around now, and yet Millennials Rising does not mention Blink-182 and the many young fans who make the band a success. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut is the authors' idea of where popular culture is today. Millennials Rising heralds boy bands as what music will increasingly be like as the current decade unfolds, and blasts the "edgy" bands as groups that will be washed away, but could the authors have predicted bands like Good Charlotte or artists like Avril Lavigne?

This leads to the bigger question of whether the book and the theory will be able to predict anything. S&H write about "rebelling by being better" during the present decade. Apparently, their idea of rebellion is not listening to Limp Bizkit, blasting censorship, or doing illegal drugs, but wearing preppy clothes, waiting until marriage to have sex, and trusting their government. According to them, we should expect to see Millennials petitioning for policies that will punish their own peers. S&H write that we will accept the draft and join the military in great numbers when the crisis presents us with a war, and even do National Service. Frankly, can anyone imagine any more than 20% of today's high school students doing their duty and risking their life in war in the name of America? Also, our generation has done nothing to make a commitment to following Bush as leader during the Iraq War, while S&H predict Millennials serving their president. How suited to a Hero generation is that? The G.I. Generation followed FDR so blindly they had to print his campaign materials in Braille. When it comes to rallying around their president and leading the direction of the nation during a crisis, Millennials have surely disappointed those who expected them to do just as the authors said we would. This, of course, does not have to be a bad thing, but it does make you wonder about the limitations of the predictive abilities of the theory.

Some parts of it make for very interesting reading, but all the talk about how they are to be the "next great" generation gets to you sometimes. S&H seem to believe you can never think too big about those Millennials. Millennials Rising presents an image of youth that is set to amaze you and will attract readers, but sometimes what the book describes just isn't happening.

Millennials Rising produces a view and explanation of youth that is simply out of touch with reality. It makes bizarre statements that youth claiming that teens and children fit a likened mold and blows teen trends into distorted shapes. The authors' assertions and isolated quotes throughout the book clearly do not reflect any actual occurrence with most or even many of these kids. Some of the absurd parts of this book simply point themselves out; anyone can tell that some parts are embarrassingly exaggerated. In real life, are teenagers all (or mostly) bright and cheery and working to the hardest, accepting hard structure without protests, aiming specifically to please their and other's parents at the expense of their personal freedom, believing that they themselves are not being disciplined hard enough? I was shocked to see how many people here agree with this tripe and find it to be accurate. I will note that most of the positive reviews focus on how this generation is not criminal, is not stupid or underachieving, is better than the media says, has potential, etc. while saying nothing about its most bizarre statements and reasoning or its key point that youth are lock-step, repulsed by unconventional culture and trusting in authority. Apparently what people like about the book is its pointing out the positive trends, rather than the accuracy.

Trends are misrepresented to conform to the book's thesis whenever possible. The steep decline in teenage pregnancy and STD, suicide, violent crime, etc. that began in the early 1990's, while real in itself, is attributed to this model of well-behaved youth. External factors like the economy are completely ignored. Not even mentioned is the fact that these trends had changed direction with Generation X and have nothing to do with the current generation of teens. Their theory often makes claims with no proof, then uses these claims to bolster the theory. Where, for instance, is the evidence that pop of the type popular with young teenage girls is true Millennial music while hard rock like Limp Bizkit is soon to die out? This, the authors assert, is proof that today's youth are completely clean-cut and have something better for them going than Xers ever had. Some excerpts in this book just puzzle me and make me wonder if this was intended to be fact or fiction. The book says that teens are all wearing bright colors now and almost no teens wear black anymore. Just go out to a local high school and look for yourself--you'll notice that black is all around and most, kids, are indeed wearing black or at least non-vibrant colors--black clothes and also black shoes, black backpacks, black folders and black guitar cases can be seen on any campus.

Aside from their unfactualness, Strauss and Howe's arguments also lack consistency and cohesiveness. Is this "civic" mindset something Millennials already embrace ("Millennials are upbeat", "Millennials do trust parents and authority"), or is it something they are beginning to embrace and "starting" to show trends in", or is it something they will embrace in the future once they stop following Generation X as they are doing now? Do Millennials obey the authority that is already in power and follow rather than lead, as they so often assert? Or is a "Great" generation defined by deciding on the ideal rules itself and enforcing them on all of society, distinguishing such generations as GI and Silent--as Strauss and Howe say is part of the Millennial culture when they argue that these teens will introduce drugs like marijuana into the Establishment and influence societal norms with their own attitudes for decades to come? There has to be a reason substance abuse hasn't declined the same way teen pregnancy is, which itself should prove that teens are not law-abiding, and Strauss and Howe completely change their argument around in explaining it.

Some of the generalizations about generations seem to be pulled out of thin air. The generation that came of age with Catcher in the Rye and Rebel Without a Cause was famed for its all-time conformity in youth? What basis do they have for their premise that Generation Xers were diehard individualists in their high school years, being completely diverse, as if they weren't divided into popular students and "geeks" or "losers" and didn't judge each other by conformity to expensive fashion? Why do they think that the jocks in high school are less typical of the 80's than of the 00's? And where are they getting the
decline of Calvin Klein from?

Sadly, this book neglects to mention entirely any statistics contrary to the main illusion of a credible thesis it is trying to create. There are parts about today's youth being heavily structured, seeking tradition, and drawn towards activities chaperoned by adults, but no mentions of sources like the May 2000 Newsweek cover story on teens, whose findings negate several of their claims. The book does point out some positive points about youth culture, but one needs to examine the big picture--that the book as a whole is not all positive, and sometimes just made up--and show it with no strings attached.

I first heard about this book in a newspaper feature last summer that announced, from one of the authors' mind, what teens want in movies and what they claim most of us find offensive. The author's article wrote: "Go to a health club, a beach club, anywhere people of different ages change clothes. Who do you see changing quickly in the corner? Teens. Who prances around naked? Fifty-year-olds. Back in the 1960s, teenagers reveled in nudity: Fifty-year-olds did not." Some people remarked that that article was just a method for selling the author's (William Strauss) latest _Millennials Rising_ book. It was all a tie-in to _Millennials Rising_, as one wrote. After spending a few weeks tallying in public beach restrooms and watching 33 Baby Boomers hide away frightfully into the stalls while just 5 let their bodies be, as 12 teenagers sat out on the restroom bench and flattened out to change, I had to find someone to borrow this book from to see exactly what other kind of nonsense is in here.

Well I finally found it, the book I am reviewing here, and I was utterly riled up and alternately turned to pallor by what I saw. _Millennials Rising_ by William Strauss and Neil Howe is a terrible new book with the authors' own attitudes and tones clearly creeping in. Central is the statement that teens today, utterly different from Generation X who apparently are no longer teens, want modesty. Several other virtues and vices, such as being group-minded and team-working, as well as conservative, heart-of-the-community citizens who deeply trust their government, being optimistic and totally trusting in politics and the system despite mountains of corruption, are mentioned throughout, with the same remarks that teens are so well-behaved being repeated a hundred times each in this book, the same things being said over and over again.

While _Milennials Rising_ repeated page after page that we insist upon some concept of "good conduct" taken from the 1940s, I didn't believe a word of it. The apparent lesson of the book is that most teens want to return to traditional values now because they realize the decay of civic life and "institutions". Right. Anyone can take a small minority of the population and make it sound like the norm if you look at only a few kids. To put together this book they found a few teens who believe that "The best way for me to rebel is for me to dress formally all the time . . . respect my elders, and love my country . . .". Or a teen who wrote "the kid with orange hair and a tongue piercing. what a joke. for attention and that is all they do it for, not for self expression. any parent who would allow that form of self-mutilation should be charged with abuse not being a cool parent." Kids like that would get made into a fight if they said that at my school.

These Boomer men who aren't even marketers shouldn't have been allowed to speak about what's considered cool and uncool among teen circles; they get this one study of what sales of brands have gone up and down in the past few years and decide that the rise of Old Navy and Adidas or the decline of Levi's and SEGA is further evidence that teens are some kind of pre-retro anti-Xers. Why don't they mention, say, the recent rise of Arizona Jeans or all these other things that sound closer to X. They take it from only a few kids and say that most of us have these tastes in music and fashion. The tastes of one little subgroup. If I said the skaters represented a fat majority of today's teens, that would never be true, and I'd knock out everyone else with their styles as typical. They report on the Fallon-Elligott marketing group with its determination that teens fell into eight categories and called it "a nastier update of the old VALS typology". That it's only meant to "wrap around the image of kids as über-Xers". Doesn't it occur to them that maybe they find teens falling into those groups because we ARE sort of like X? Another quot they stick in reports "Business Week did a marketing piece on the new generation. . . . All the Boomer marketers who pick up this piece are going to get a really telling description of late-wave Xers-then try to apply that knowledge to Millennials and completely flop". If the Business Week editors actually study real kids, did it ever occur to them that these kids really ARE like late Xers (however late "late Xers are", although I assume it's shortly before 1981 from the authors' dates), and it isn't going to fail just because their ideas about teens say it will? I can't see any differences between the set born in 1978 and the set born in 1984 myself. Even the authors themselves mention commerce like Delia's that works successfully with a Generation-X flair. _Millennials Rising_ provides evidence that teens come from a new, wanted generation because starting in 1982 movies show angelic babies and children instead of the "Rosemary's Baby" and "Exorcist" and all those evil baby movies before. This, they say, represents a change in societal attitudes towards children that's supposed to stick with them now as teens, but they say that gross movies like "American Pie" that feature teens only show Generation X's humor and as movies don't reflect reality. Movies are a good gauge of generations and reality when it helps support their claim, and yet they aren't when they go against their notion of what teens are like. Make up your minds! Also, as teenagers we're certainly not treated as cuddly as we were as children back then. They try to spread butter on movie and TV teens as much as possible, painting "Dawson's Creek" youth as clean-cut kids who get along with their parents. What about the time Dawson said, "Did you ever notice that whenever your parental authority is most under question that you just start barking out orders?" They don't mention that anywhere. They disappointingly avoid grappling with the themes of lesbianism in "Election" or consider for once that anything might reflect the not-very-clean-cut teen REALITY. They acknowledge that some of these things "would get a real kid suspended", but did it occur the them that these are happening on campuses all the time and most of the time kids don't actually get caught? Every other analysis of real teens, and even the realer-than-reality-shows "American High" shows a wildly diverse group of youth today, most of whom are not clean-cut little honor kids who feel a duty to government.

The basic idea, which reflects NOTHING of anything that goes on around my day by day, or anywhere else I assume, is that teens have been rushing to values that would make FDR or Pat Buchanan proud. That we're held to unfairly high new standards and yet like those standards, as if we're actually dumb enough to think tight new restrictions on behavior are good for us. This "great" portrait of my generation is false, and would be nothing to celebrate even if they were true.

If I would have read this book when it came out in 2000, I probably would have been completely blown away by it. As it is, in 2006, it is still a pretty good read.

In Millennials Rising, authors Howe & Strauss examine what they call the "millennial generation" --those kids born since 1982, who would be high school graduates in the year 2000. They examine trends in a number of categories including family, school, conduct, culture, commerce, etc., showing what has happened through the 1990's and making predictions for the new millennium. They make a number of interesting observations about the character of this generation and come across as very optimistic about where these kids are going.

The main thing this book has going for it is the strength of their observations of the previous generations. As a Gen-Xer myself, I found many of their points congruent with my experience of my own life and what I've observed in my Boomer parents. I was also intrigued by their ability to trace generational cycles back literally to the American colonial period. I am not a big believer of the "history repeats itself" mindset but I do believe that general trends often recur and Howe & Strauss are good at picking out these trends.

However, there are some flaws with this book. First, this book, with its margin quotes on every page and it's broken up text is very hard to read. Maybe it was written this way in an attempt to simulate the computer-altered attention spans of these millennials; however, hyperlinking does not translate to the pages of a book and I wish "cutting edge" authors would ditch this practice. If you want to hyperlink your text, leave it on a computer.

Second, I found their "hero generation" concept to be rather disingenuous, though it fits right in with their optimism for the millennials. Six years down the road, I have seen very little that seems "heroic" in the millennial generation even by the standards of Howe & Strauss. Which really leads to my primary complaint about the book: it is dated. Any book that predicts as much as this book does has a harder time standing the test of time than other books. Though some of their generalizations may turn out to be accurate, many of their observations have already shown their weakness. Can 9/11 and the Iraq war be anything other than the "hero trial" posited by the authors? If so, it seems to me that many of their conclusions have not stood up.

But it is difficult to be brief about a longish book that contains a lot of things to think over like this one. Still, despite its flaws, I think it is a very valuable read for anyone interested in trying to come to grips with historical trends. It is also a valuable tool in trying to understand "these kids today." Keeping in mind that its authoring have done nothing more that capture a moment in time (albeit very well), there are excellent things to be drawn from this book.

I read the Millenials Rising book and I have to say that I found that a lot of the things that were said in this book to be very dated and, for the most part, not revelant to today's teenagers and young adults. One thing that I've noted is that a lot of things have happened since the publication of this book, 9/11, the war in Iraq, etc. and it doesn't jibe with me that the authors stated that the entertainment the Millenials enjoy are "squeaky clean" which doesn't explain the popualrtiy of subsequent shows such as "Chappelle's Show", or "Boondocks" both of which are highly controversial.

I also get the impression that the authors only spoke to a certain group of people which undercuts the assertion that this is the make up of a generation as a whole and I get the feeling that there are other voices that were being ignored of a lot of subjects(such as Columbine) and doesn't really tell the whole story.

I think that this is a very poor book to look to understanding today's youth and, as such, I do not recommend it to anyone.

Okay, I don't usually write reviews on Amazon, but when I found a book
that got today's teens so completely wrong, I had to write
something. The kids at my high school are nothing like the book says
we are. Kids do things whether their parents want them to or not. The
majority of people at my school are doing drugs, and certainly the
vast majority drink. All the zero tolerance policies haven't changed
anything, because the truth is that teens aren't going to listen to
adults like little automatons.

I thought it was so stupid the way
this book said teenagers have nothing to rebel against any more. Have
these guys actually TALKED with any teenagers? Most students at my
school rebel against the unfair school rules and hypocritical
teachers. One student at my school got suspended because he put up a
webpage (from his HOME computer) that made fun of the school. We have
one teacher who flunks everyone he doesn't like regardless of how well
they do on tests. Students are being forced to go to a place where
their rights are stripped away and they are being taught that there is
nothing good about America and that the first Amendment means
nothing. And the dress codes only teach students to rebel too. Just
because your school bans tank tops or hair dyes doesn't mean kids
won't wear them. There are tank tops all over school! And black is
probably the most popular color at our school (except maybe for
blue/denim). They quoted someone saying "Go to any high school
and you hardly ever see kids wearing black...clothing", but
there's tons of it every day, RIGHT HERE! Did the authors even bother
to check their facts? Teenagers also rebel against hypocritical
parents. The book stated that "hypocritical" and
"strict" were the two adjectives teens used most often to
describe their parents, but it still said we like the rules anyway!
What a load of tripe. My classmates still rebel against their parents
and know when they are in the wrong. Most of them hate authority.

The authors of this book say that the punkish kids shot up Columbine
because they felt alone when the campus population shifted from punks
to jocks and preppies because Generation X was replaced by a new
generation. But the reports on the shooting talked about how Columbine
was known as "the jock school" and "Abercrombie
High" for years and had always won the state
championship. Columbine was totally centered in on jocks long before
the Class of 2000 came in and the shooters' isolation has nothing to
do with generations.

All William Strauss and Niel Howe talk about
is how we want more discipline and "order" and stricter
rules. This book makes us sound like fascists. Half the statements in
here are completely false. I saw something just the other day that 70%
of teenagers are against restrictions of teens' Internet use. If you
really want to read about what kids are thinking, go find some other
book on the subject.