Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
97% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Enter your mobile phone or email address
By pressing "Send link," you agree to Amazon's Conditions of Use.
You consent to receive an automated text message from or on behalf of Amazon about the Kindle App at your mobile number above. Consent is not a condition of any purchase. Message & data rates may apply.
Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials Hardcover – November 7, 2017
|
Malcolm Harris
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
|
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$0.00
|
Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$17.89 | — |
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Enhance your purchase
-
Print length272 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
-
Publication dateNovember 7, 2017
-
Dimensions6 x 1 x 8.5 inches
-
ISBN-100316510866
-
ISBN-13978-0316510868
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Malcolm Harris offers up an exciting, persuasive argument that young people are not, in fact, monsters. An excellent gift for NPR-listening elders who appreciate a good debate and could use a little sympathy for the millennial."―New York Magazine
"The first major accounting of the millennial generation written by someone who belongs to it."―Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
"When will someone stick up for millennials? We have been sheltered by our parents, swindled by our universities, deadened by our therapists, and for all this our reward has been glib condescension from the boomer press. Rising to our defense is Harris, a familiar provocateur from the internet's left flank. Harris contends that America has stiffed our generation...He brings a fresh, contrarian eye to some of the usual data points...As generational advocates go, we could do worse than Harris."―New York Times Book Review
"Malcolm Harris's thesis is the kind of brilliantly simple idea that instantly clarifies an entire area of culture: Millennials are the way they are-anxious, harried, and 'narcissistically' self-focused, though hardly lazy or entitled-because the neoliberal economy has made them so. When we raise children in a world that reduces people to 'human capital', then bids down the price of that resource, what else should we expect? Kids These Days is deft, witty, unillusioned, and brutally frank. Read it and weep, puke, scream."―WilliamDeresiewicz, New York Times bestselling author of Excellent Sheep
"Kids These Days is the best, most comprehensive work of social and economic analysis about our benighted generation. Malcolm Harris matches Naomi Klein for depth of research and Jane Jacobs for systemic vision. If you're a millennial who feels economically jinxed and unfairly spat-upon, but can't say why, cram this book in your brain; if you think millennials are lazy and entitled, cram this book in your mouth. Fascinating, infuriating, and bulging with receipts, Kids These Days shows us why no space is safe."―Tony Tulathimutte,author of Private Citizens
"This fiercely smart book is not just another 'millennials killed chain restaurants' kind of thing. Instead, Harris dives deep into the ways that the millennial generation has been shaped by the capitalist economic forces at work now in America. . . It's a must read for anyone who cares about the future of our society."―Nylon
"It is difficult to believe nobody has written this book before, although it is fortunate that Harris--who manages to be quick and often funny without sacrificing rigor--is the author who ultimately took up the task. In fewer than three hundred pages, he surveys the myriad hot takes on millennials-they're lazy, they're entitled, they're narcissists who buy avocado toast instead of homes, slacking on Snapchat at their unpaid internships-and asks, 'Why?'"―Bookforum
"Malcolm Harris restores a good deal of precision to the business of defining the millennial and generational discourse in general. Adhering to a Marxian and behaviorist account of society, Harris argues that you cannot understand millennials - those born between 1980 and 2000, which include him, and me for that matter - without examining the political, economic and social institutions that nurtured them... Through this lens we get a sweeping sketch of the bleak, anxiety-ridden lives of young Americans."―Financial Times
"A methodical deconstruction of one of the stupidest tropes to degrade recent discourse. The 'millennial' is created, not born, as Harris shows, and as is true of all creations, her qualities reveal more about her makers than they do about her... Kids These Days answers a political moment defined both by youthful outrage and by the patronizing responses to it, which deny that it is informed by lived experience."―The Nation
"Harris writes clearly and thoughtfully on key issues facing this generation today. . . [he] reveals the political, cultural, and economic climates that millennials need to navigate, along with the new issues, never seen in previous generations, millennials must address. Readers interested in sociology of class, economic history, and the millennial generation will find plenty of fascinating food for thought here."―Booklist
"An informative study of why the millennial generation faces more struggles than expected, despite the hard work they've invested in moving ahead."―Kirkus
"Harris offers a potent rebuke to the idea that neoliberalism is an ideology of freedom and movement, showing instead how lives have become increasingly surveilled, managed and even endangered as corporations attempt to push drive for profit to the absolute limits."―The Forward
"A crucial work of generational analysis...In prose that is precise, readable, and witty, [Harris] explores the economic, social, and political conditions that shaped those of us born between 1980 and 2000. Harris's central contention is that millennials are what happens when contemporary capitalism converts young people into 'human capital'. After reading his book, it seems ill-advised to understand millennials any other way."―Dissent Magazine
About the Author
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (November 7, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316510866
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316510868
- Item Weight : 13.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 8.5 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#687,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #234 in Demography Studies
- #1,169 in Sociology of Class
- #1,789 in Economic History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Harris supports his clear thesis throughout in journalistic manner with reference to dozens of studies, statistics and sources, however despite being scholarly high-level work his book is also riveting and a quick read, really puts our contemporary society in perspective especially for Millennials and Generation X.
Particularly important with regard to employment prospects, competition, demographics and the stark reality of our near future.
So if the kids take the right classes, study, do the homework, master the right extracurricular activities, and do well on standardized tests – well, they should have a good shot at a spot in a decent college. This results in then a sort of prerequisite to “better life outcomes.” This “investment” will make the student a more valuable future employee. Growing up becomes a very complex exercise in risk management, notes the author. He continues saying that “By every metric, this generation is the most educated in American history, yet Millennials are worse off economically than their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.” College follows next, which turns out to be more comprehensive and most directly consequential. College admissions act as rating agencies for kids, and once the “kid-bond” is rated, it has four years until the expectation of a return. And boy is this going to be expensive. Between 1979 and 2014, the price of tuition at four-year nonprofit colleges, adjusted for inflation, jumped 197 percent at private schools and 280 percent at public schools – yikes! At the same time real wages for graduates is down 8.5 percent between 2000 and 2012. The author then elaborates on the motivation behind lenders awarding thousands of dollars in loans to teenagers and why universities need so much money from students. He elaborates on the questions: “Where does the money come from, where does it go, and why does everyone keep insisting college is a good investment no matter what it costs?” Discussing the first question, we see government student loans swamping a generation in debt, while the Department of Education reaps about $18.99 in profit for every $100 in loans originated in 2014. The answers provided for the other questions are equally enlightening.
Seguing into the work environment, we see many changes in the college employ (to reduce costs as tuition goes up), but also across the economy “bad jobs are getting worse, good jobs are getting better, and the middle is disappearing.” Productivity has increased rapidly between 1972 and 2009, while, at the same time, hourly compensation has been falling way behind. Employers are delighted! Not so much the Millennials. So basically the author proclaims, “Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machines.” And technological innovation has enabled workers to be more hyper-connected, superfast, always-on tools. The whole system produces workers that are too efficient for their own good.
Then there’s the government conservatives war on the welfare state. We see what is called the “juvenilization of poverty.” By 2012 one in five (actually over 20%) of American children lived below the poverty line. For adults over sixty-five, that value is just 9.1 percent. There are lucky times and places to be born. In America, it appears that the relatively lucky time to have been born is in the past. In other words, today’s children and young adults are worse off than their parents. The author buttresses his case against government policies in the chapter called “The Feds.” He concludes that the American government can, in effect, act like a predator.
In the chapter “Everybody is a Star,” we how kids are disadvantaged in the sports and music arenas. We see all the hard work athletes perform so a few can get coveted spots on professional sports teams. We see all the tremendously hard work youth perform, let’s say, to become an elite violinist. These youth engage in grueling schedules to reach the top. “The Millennial character is a product of life spent investing in your own potential and being managed like a risk,” according to the author. The author finishes up the discussion by listing seven slow-motion disasters that he fears many of them could look forward to if Millennials continue on the current path. He does offer his take on some of the possible solutions going forward, however. He laments, “Either we continue the trends we’ve been given and enact the bad future or we refuse it and cut the knot of trend lines that defines our collectivity.” He continues, “it is up to the Millennial cohort to make something else of what’s been made of us.”
Take this gold star
Make it soar
Take this gold star
And redefine the lore.
Lame poem but this book really hyped me up to start redefining Millennials and showing the generations before us who's in charge now. Do you feel like crap everyday? Do your friends take medication just to get through a week of finals? Do you hear older people complain about being on your phone all the time? This book shows how Gen X may have ruined the very idea of a Millennials and now refuse to take credit for it. Breaking down the specifics of the generation that is known for being unproductive and lazy shows how Millennials have become deprived of childhoods based on how much pressure is placed on them to be the best from the very beginning.
Certainly religion is left far off the map in Harris' analysis. Perhaps he should have included it in the Boomer legacy. Boomers left the church to chase after sex, drugs and rock and roll and then when they went to have kids didn't want to impose some faith on them, so left them to "find their own faith." Great plan, that. And so the faith in Christ that could mitigate this onslaught on childhood (and on into adulthood) has never been introduced to at least one, probably at least two generations. Harris has interesting statistical analysis and logical extrapolations from it, but no answers. (For that I don't fault him for not painting a faux ending.) I would be interested to hear how he thinks the dearth of spirituality impacted the doomed generation.
It's not always cheery, but it's often funny, and extremely smart. Must read.
Top reviews from other countries
Furthermore, the book is a parallel look at contemporary American society and the changes that have transformed it into an exploitative, take-no-prisoners, winner-take-all environment.
Highly recommended!














