From the author of the critically acclaimed England’s Dreaming, a landmark cultural history of youth Teenagers—as we have come to define them—were not, award-winning author Jon Savage tells us, born in the 1950s of rockers and Beatniks, when most histories would begin. Rather, the teenager as icon can be traced back to the 1890s, when the foundations for the new century were laid in urban youth culture.
Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture is a monumental cultural history that charts the spread of the American ideal of youth through England and Europe and around the world. From Peter Pan to Oscar Wilde, Anne Frank to the Wizard of Oz, Savage documents youth culture’s development as a commodity and an industry from the turn of the last century to its current driving force in the global economy. Fusing film, music, literature, diaries, fashion, and art, this epic cultural history is an astonishing and surprising chronicle of modern life sure to appeal to pop culture fans, social history buffs, and anyone who has ever been a teenager.
“The definitive history of youth in revolt, from the gaslight age to the dawn of rock.”
—David Fricke, Rolling Stone
“Compulsive reading . . . Teenage is a rich, rewarding book that makes an important contribution to cultural history.”
—Camille Paglia, The New York Times Book Review
“Resonant . . . Savage explores . . . [an] array of teenager types, from the wild, sensational precursors to juvenile delinquency to the straight-laced good-citizen proto-preppie. It’s Savage’s claim to being a great historian, and it’s mighty convincing.”
—The Onion
Viking's Jon Savage, author of Teenage, was interviewed on CBC's The Sunday Edition on July 8, 2007. Listen to a podcast here.
