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In Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids , award-winning-sociologist Murray Milner draws upon two years of intensive fieldwork in one high school and 300 written interviews about high school life across the USA. What he discovers through their stories is that high schools are breeding grounds for status ...

In Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids , award-winning-sociologist Murray Milner draws upon two years of intensive fieldwork in one high school and 300 written interviews about high school life across the USA. What he discovers through their stories is that high schools are breeding grounds for status consciousness and 'keeping up with the Joneses' mentality. Milner argues that the importance of who sits at which lunch table, who goes to the prom with whom and who makes the cheerleading squad or football team, as well as what jeans, sneakers and t-shirts one wears, are essential for teenagers to distinguish themselves from one another. As teens use status objects to define themselves, they both become the trendsetters for the culture at large and are also compelled to buy into the trends to look cool. In other words, 'being cool' may come at a price, but it is one that teens are more than willing to pay.

In the tradition of Irvin Yalom's Love's Executioner, Dr. Lynn Ponton's remarkable book takes readers inside the minds of 15 troubled adolescents to provide a compelling look at today's teenage experience. Included are Jill, a 13-year-old thrill-seeking runaway; Hannah, a privileged daughter of ...

In the tradition of Irvin Yalom's Love's Executioner, Dr. Lynn Ponton's remarkable book takes readers inside the minds of 15 troubled adolescents to provide a compelling look at today's teenage experience. Included are Jill, a 13-year-old thrill-seeking runaway; Hannah, a privileged daughter of suburbia who suffers from anorexia; and Joe, a high school senior with a serious drinking problem. The case studies vary from the puzzling to the horrifying, but with her confident and engaging voice, Ponton brings out the unifying themes in all of them. She proposes that teenage "acting out" can be understood in terms of "risk-taking", and that by redirecting this natural impulse into healthy channels parents can minimize the dangers inherent in today's teen culture and help their children develop into mature individuals.

Challenging the traditional views of adolescence and offering a constructive new model for understanding teenage behavior, The Romance of Risk is an essential book for parents concerned about their children's well-being in this age of drug abuse, rampant violence, and AIDS.

Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Left Behind series are but the latest manifestations of American teenagers' longstanding fascination with the supernatural and the paranormal. In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Schofield Clark explores the implications of this fascination for ...

Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Left Behind series are but the latest manifestations of American teenagers' longstanding fascination with the supernatural and the paranormal. In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Schofield Clark explores the implications of this fascination for contemporary religious and spiritual practices. Relying on stories gleaned from more than 250 in-depth interviews with teens and their families, Clark seeks to discover what today's teens really believe and why. She finds that as adherence to formal religious bodies declines, interest in alternative spiritualities as well as belief in "superstition" grow accordingly. Ironically, she argues, fundamentalist Christian alarmism about the forces of evil has also fed belief in a wider array of supernatural entities. Resisting the claim that the media "brainwash" teens, Clark argues that today's popular stories of demons, hell, and the afterlife actually have their roots in the U.S.'s religious heritage. She considers why some young people are nervous about supernatural stories in the media, while others comfortably and often unselfconsciously blur the boundaries between those stories of the realm beyond that belong to traditional religion and those offered by the entertainment media. At a time of increased religious pluralism and declining participation in formal religious institutions, Clark says, we must completely reexamine what young people mean--and what they may believe--when they identify themselves as "spiritual" or "religious." Offering provocative insights into how the entertainment media shape contemporary religious ideas and practices, From Angels to Aliens paints a surprising--and perhaps alarming--portrait of the spiritual state of America's youth.