Late Bloomers: Coming of Age in Today's America:: The Right Place at the Wrong Time

In this sweeping and often dull analysis, twentysomething authors Lipsky and Abrams aim to put the various perceptions of their generation as unmotivated ``whiners'' into social, economic and political context. Citing and deconstructing a thick dossier of media reports and statistics to the point of sounding much like a graduate thesis, the authors shed little if any new light on this subject. In their summation, Lipsky and Abrams conclude that the ebb and flow of the country's economy, the advent of new family configurations and immersion in the TV culture have all contributed to the formation of a group of young adults with bleak prospects on many fronts-a situation also observed at other times in history. The book ends on an optimistic note, stating that the lot of twentysomethings today is not their fault, and that a different economic landscape will arrive in the not-too-distant future. (Nov.)