About the Author

Jeff Gordinier is the author of X Saves the World and the Editor-at-Large at Details magazine. He lives in the New York area and has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Elle, Esquire, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, and PoetryFoundation.org. Nobody, including Jeff, is quite sure of how to pronounce his last name.

Reviews

Nostalgia for the attitudes and culture of the early to mid-'90s looms large in Gordinier's entertaining book-length argument for the greatness of Generation X. Gordinier does not have warm sentiments toward the baby boomers or the current "wanna-wanna generation" of celebrity worshippers, preferring instead the self-effacing, conflictedly ambitious heroes of the '90s, like Kurt Cobain and Richard Linklater, who were not enthralled by the concept of "changing the world." Gordinier has an easygoing style and a comprehensive knowledge of pop culture gleaned from a career writing for Entertainment Weekly and editing Details magazine, and this might be the reason the book sometimes feels like a collection of essays. Sequences on the rise of Nirvana and the burst of the dot-com bubble are ably narrated. And Gordinier does find a fresh perspective in discussions of recent phenomena such as YouTube and American Idol and their relationship to Generation X. (Mar. 31) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

I loved this book. . . . It's impassioned, very quick on its feet, dense with all the right allusions, funny, and in the end actually very moving.
-Nick Hornby

Ever wonder what became of Generation X, those ironic slackers wedged between the paunchy, tie-dyed boomers and their smug offspring, the millennials? Gordinier's first-person manifesto starts with a thumbnail sketch of '90s disillusionment and ends with a passionate call for social activism.
-Wired