Rating: 
Summary: Weak
Review: A weak effort with some rather lame, crotchety attempts to announce that grunge and body piercing are out--as if because an "anti-cool" generation of youth rejects them. Where are they getting the sources for what type of music the teenage set has actually been buying these last few years or their sources that say alternative music has hit the bottom in SALES and gone out of fashion? Not from any reference on album sales I've ever seen. It's difficult to find the sources for everything in the index, and when you do find a source or survey linked to a section of the book, it often turns out to be on only a segment of the teen population, for example their claim that teens are offended by sexual content in movies turns out to be from a study that only sampled high-achieving high school students. And in the reference for 9 out of 10 teens describing themselves as always happy and optimistic, I just get referred over in the index to chapters 4 and 8, where I don't even see anything about optimism in their notes for chapter 4 and I can't tell where in chapter 8 they have the study that says 9 out of 10 teens are usually happy. Although I wouldn't be surprised if this came from the same survey confined to high-achieving high school students, since I looked at this survey's recent results and just about 90% of them did actually answer on a recent annual poll that they were "usually happy". Not a very useful guide at all to learning about any trends that reflect youth in general.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor -- deception
Review: While I do not find today's youth a particularly boisterous or "bad kid" generation, this book goes beyond assessment of the trends and into self-convincing in a very deceptive way. There are indeed trends out there, some positive and some negative (which is partly a matter of opinion anyway), but Strauss and Howe have gone a little too far this time in seeing what they want to see.One reviewer notes: "One thing is that the authors know what to look for by using their generational theory. As a result of this, he [obtained] results that would surprise most people, but would not surprise anyone familiar with their previous works." Ironically, this is exactly an example of why this cannot be considered a good book. The two authors knew what they wanted to write about youth long before writing this book, in fact wanting to write whatever would fit a set of predictions about this crop of youth that these authors have had for a decade. Rather than "looking for" wholesome youth, they need to look at the whole picture of how things are. But William Strauss and Neil Howe look for and write what they want to find. Deceptively one-sided quotes fill the pages with statements from youth who fit their preconceived paradigm and adults who observe something in youth that fits their paradigm. They had to wade through all the quotes from young speakers who fit a different paradigm. Why these teens? Why did they conduct surveys of their own county in Virginia and not some other county? What these two authors don't mention in the book is that they pick and choose from surveys rather than showing the whole picture of the generation. For instance, they quote a CBS survey to persuade the reader of the government/parental trust of this generation ("Half trust the government to do what's right.") Why this survey, and not one of the Newsweek, Monitoring the Future or other surveys that showed more cynicism about government or a less two-dimensionally rosy picture of relationships with parents than this book would have you believe? Substance abuse, even though lower than Boomer youth rates, is higher than that of generation X, and the authors' attempt to deal with this inconvenient statistic fails to convince me. (Curiously, the same CBS survey they cite on government/parental trust has very low figures for use of ANY drug among teenagers, even less than the statistics the authors produce on substancce abuse. Hmmmm.) They write that this is entirely an era in which the benefits of youth and children are paramount and trump all else, yet avoid mentioning the fall of school taxes or university funding to the kids who supposedly need it most, and outright deny that cheating has risen in schools, where elsewhere it has. At one point they state, "Look closely at youth indicators and you'll see that Millennial attitudes and behaviors represents a sharp break from Generation X". Ironically, it shows a continuation of Generation X. They neglect to mention that X was the same generation that reversed the Boomer SAT slide and agrees, rather than conflicts with, these students' high scores. On the other hand, the substance abuse rates of these youth represent a turn away from Generation X's youth in the "wrong" direction -- they are un-X-like by using drugs more! Rather than showing a balanced picture, Strauss and Howe have merely written what they wanted to see, looking for rather than looking at, and presented the reader with a rehash if their precxonceived ideas of youth. This has merely reached cult-live levels of self-assuring.
Rating: 
Summary: Such Happy news
Review: This should be given to any parent,to make them notice how wonderful there kids are.I learn so many new things all of them positive after reading this book. It`s about them we as a soceity started congradulating these young ones,and now I now why aFter discovering these kids are modest and good,their not schoolyard shooters or young hookers after all.But i never would have relaized it without Milenials Rising.
Rating:
Summary: This book should never have been written
Review: I first heard about this book in a newspaper feature last summer that announced, from one of the authors' mind, what teens want in movies and what they claim most of us find offensive. The author's article wrote: "Go to a health club, a beach club, anywhere people of different ages change clothes. Who do you see changing quickly in the corner? Teens. Who prances around naked? Fifty-year-olds. Back in the 1960s, teenagers reveled in nudity: Fifty-year-olds did not." Some people remarked that that article was just a method for selling the author's (William Strauss) latest _Millennials Rising_ book. It was all a tie-in to _Millennials Rising_, as one wrote. After spending a few weeks tallying in public beach restrooms and watching 33 Baby Boomers hide away frightfully into the stalls while just 5 let their bodies be, as 12 teenagers sat out on the restroom bench and flattened out to change, I had to find someone to borrow this book from to see exactly what other kind of nonsense is in here. Well I finally found it, the book I am reviewing here, and I was utterly riled up and alternately turned to pallor by what I saw. _Millennials Rising_ by William Strauss and Neil Howe is a terrible new book with the authors' own attitudes and tones clearly creeping in. Central is the statement that teens today, utterly different from Generation X who apparently are no longer teens, want modesty. Several other virtues and vices, such as being group-minded and team-working, as well as conservative, heart-of-the-community citizens who deeply trust their government, being optimistic and totally trusting in politics and the system despite mountains of corruption, are mentioned throughout, with the same remarks that teens are so well-behaved being repeated a hundred times each in this book, the same things being said over and over again. While _Milennials Rising_ repeated page after page that we insist upon some concept of "good conduct" taken from the 1940s, I didn't believe a word of it. The apparent lesson of the book is that most teens want to return to traditional values now because they realize the decay of civic life and "institutions". Right. Anyone can take a small minority of the population and make it sound like the norm if you look at only a few kids. To put together this book they found a few teens who believe that "The best way for me to rebel is for me to dress formally all the time . . . respect my elders, and love my country . . .". Or a teen who wrote "the kid with orange hair and a tongue piercing. what a joke. for attention and that is all they do it for, not for self expression. any parent who would allow that form of self-mutilation should be charged with abuse not being a cool parent." Kids like that would get made into a fight if they said that at my school. These Boomer men who aren't even marketers shouldn't have been allowed to speak about what's considered cool and uncool among teen circles; they get this one study of what sales of brands have gone up and down in the past few years and decide that the rise of Old Navy and Adidas or the decline of Levi's and SEGA is further evidence that teens are some kind of pre-retro anti-Xers. Why don't they mention, say, the recent rise of Arizona Jeans or all these other things that sound closer to X. They take it from only a few kids and say that most of us have these tastes in music and fashion. The tastes of one little subgroup. If I said the skaters represented a fat majority of today's teens, that would never be true, and I'd knock out everyone else with their styles as typical. They report on the Fallon-Elligott marketing group with its determination that teens fell into eight categories and called it "a nastier update of the old VALS typology". That it's only meant to "wrap around the image of kids as über-Xers". Doesn't it occur to them that maybe they find teens falling into those groups because we ARE sort of like X? Another quot they stick in reports "Business Week did a marketing piece on the new generation. . . . All the Boomer marketers who pick up this piece are going to get a really telling description of late-wave Xers-then try to apply that knowledge to Millennials and completely flop". If the Business Week editors actually study real kids, did it ever occur to them that these kids really ARE like late Xers (however late "late Xers are", although I assume it's shortly before 1981 from the authors' dates), and it isn't going to fail just because their ideas about teens say it will? I can't see any differences between the set born in 1978 and the set born in 1984 myself. Even the authors themselves mention commerce like Delia's that works successfully with a Generation-X flair. _Millennials Rising_ provides evidence that teens come from a new, wanted generation because starting in 1982 movies show angelic babies and children instead of the "Rosemary's Baby" and "Exorcist" and all those evil baby movies before. This, they say, represents a change in societal attitudes towards children that's supposed to stick with them now as teens, but they say that gross movies like "American Pie" that feature teens only show Generation X's humor and as movies don't reflect reality. Movies are a good gauge of generations and reality when it helps support their claim, and yet they aren't when they go against their notion of what teens are like. Make up your minds! Also, as teenagers we're certainly not treated as cuddly as we were as children back then. They try to spread butter on movie and TV teens as much as possible, painting "Dawson's Creek" youth as clean-cut kids who get along with their parents. What about the time Dawson said, "Did you ever notice that whenever your parental authority is most under question that you just start barking out orders?" They don't mention that anywhere. They disappointingly avoid grappling with the themes of lesbianism in "Election" or consider for once that anything might reflect the not-very-clean-cut teen REALITY. They acknowledge that some of these things "would get a real kid suspended", but did it occur the them that these are happening on campuses all the time and most of the time kids don't actually get caught? Every other analysis of real teens, and even the realer-than-reality-shows "American High" shows a wildly diverse group of youth today, most of whom are not clean-cut little honor kids who feel a duty to government. The basic idea, which reflects NOTHING of anything that goes on around my day by day, or anywhere else I assume, is that teens have been rushing to values that would make FDR or Pat Buchanan proud. That we're held to unfairly high new standards and yet like those standards, as if we're actually dumb enough to think tight new restrictions on behavior are good for us. This "great" portrait of my generation is false, and would be nothing to celebrate even if they were true.
Rating:
Summary: I found this book biased and shortsighted
Review: "Millennials Rising" uses anecdotal evidence, self-serving interpretation, pandering, out-of-context quotes, spin, selected testimony, editorialization, and personal parental hubris to contend that children and teens are heroic to the every wish of today's adults. The author will aggrandize quite minor tidbits of pop culture or history again and again until he hammers the point in. "Baby on Board" signs, boy band cheerfulness or pro-child (Millennial) vs. anti-child (Gen-X) in movies are pointed out innumerable times to strengthen his argument. William Strauss shows facts that may be interpreted to support the arguments of "Millennials Rising," but entirely ignores the many valid opposing arguments across the whole book. It would be so much better if the author would acknowledge his opposition and competing views of youth and face them head-on. Generally only the most disreputable views in the "kids are out of control" camp (such as those playing up school shootings beyond credibility) are mentioned and dealt with, and most people could see that these have no value. Any intelligent objections the reader may have to William Strauss' thesis are ignored or turned into straw-men with the unflagging reassurance that today's kids are entirely good news (read: good news for centrist, middle-class, Baby Boom age adults). The reader of "Millennials Rising" is assured that his skepticism about youth only comes from the media and from an unempirically founded assumption that generations will move in a linear fashion. I only wish William Strauss would write a balanced book that shows both sides honestly.
Rating:
Summary: sad
Review: This is a sad, sad, sad look at "Generation Y" that these authors are putting out. I only hope we don't have millions of people believing after these books they put out. The authors almost sound like they're congratulating themselves...after "writing" this positive book. Let me tell you something, I'm pessimistic about this world, I don't respect my country or "my" president, I wear black and would rather watch reruns of 80's videos all day than volunteer in an army reserve. Do I feel like an outsider or abberration among my peers? No! Most of of feel like that....not like that "un-X-like" persona William Strauss now wants to declare as if from above. Everyone I know my age is against the draft. They say Generation Y will unquestioningly fight to save the nation in a crisis. If the World Trade Center attackings is the crisis they had in mind in their future chapters, it sure ain't going to happen! Remember Baby Boomers and Vietnam? It's gonna be much, much, worse than that. All of these books are full of the same, self-serving stercus. I only pray time will pass soon enough to prove their Millennial prophecies wrong before everybody.
Rating: 
Summary: Uplifting, Informative, Good Benchmark for Reflection
Review:
I was very impressed by the author's earlier book, Generations, and when this one came along I grabbed it, for I have three children in the 1982-1998 birth date range that demarcates the Millennial Generation.
As we come away from the 11 September attack on America, the horrors of genocide from Kosovo to Burundi to East Timor, the stock market crash and the threat of recession, this book is nothing if not uplifting.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who has children, deals with children or young employees, or who likes to speculate on where the future will take us.
According to the authors, and their earlier book provides a very fine and well-research foundation for their prognostications, the Millennial Generation is the next "great generation" and it will be fully capable of rising to the many challenges that face us all.
Especially encouraging is their view that much of the malaise felt by our teenagers in the post Cold-War years is being rapidly eliminated'our young people appear, at least in the most developed portions of the world, to be moving decisively toward a kinder and gentler demeanor, including a restoration of family values.
The structure of the book is useful (see the table of contents) but there is one very serious deficiency for a book of this caliber'there is no index. When I went to see all the references to "culture wars", the one somber note in this otherwise very positive assessment of the future, the lack of an index prevented me from using the book as a reference work.
This gives rise to my one concern about this generation (I have three children in the Millennials), and that is their lack of international studies and comparative religion training. It is my impression that even the best of our schools are failing to teach foreign affairs and global conditions, and failing to show how what happens beyond our water's edge has a direct bearing on our future peace and prosperity'the author's would have done well to spend more time on the differences between our US-born millennials and foreign millennials (whom they characterize as several years behind but on the same track), and to address the gaps in our education of this otherwise stellar generation.
Every parent and teacher, and every politician who wants to be elected in the next 20 years, needs to read this book. If Hollywood and other purveyors of products to the 10-25 year old marketplace were to read this book, we might get to a kinder and gentler broadcast, print media, literature, and family entertainment culture even more quickly than the book predicts.
Rating:
Summary: Out Of Touch With Reality
Review: Millennials Rising produces a view and explanation of youth that is simply out of touch with reality. It makes bizarre statements that youth claiming that teens and children fit a likened mold and blows teen trends into distorted shapes. The authors' assertions and isolated quotes throughout the book clearly do not reflect any actual occurrence with most or even many of these kids. Some of the absurd parts of this book simply point themselves out; anyone can tell that some parts are embarrassingly exaggerated. In real life, are teenagers all (or mostly) bright and cheery and working to the hardest, accepting hard structure without protests, aiming specifically to please their and other's parents at the expense of their personal freedom, believing that they themselves are not being disciplined hard enough? I was shocked to see how many people here agree with this tripe and find it to be accurate. I will note that most of the positive reviews focus on how this generation is not criminal, is not stupid or underachieving, is better than the media says, has potential, etc. while saying nothing about its most bizarre statements and reasoning or its key point that youth are lock-step, repulsed by unconventional culture and trusting in authority. Apparently what people like about the book is its pointing out the positive trends, rather than the accuracy.
Trends are misrepresented to conform to the book's thesis whenever possible. The steep decline in teenage pregnancy and STD, suicide, violent crime, etc. that began in the early 1990's, while real in itself, is attributed to this model of well-behaved youth. External factors like the economy are completely ignored. Not even mentioned is the fact that these trends had changed direction with Generation X and have nothing to do with the current generation of teens. Their theory often makes claims with no proof, then uses these claims to bolster the theory. Where, for instance, is the evidence that pop of the type popular with young teenage girls is true Millennial music while hard rock like Limp Bizkit is soon to die out? This, the authors assert, is proof that today's youth are completely clean-cut and have something better for them going than Xers ever had. Some excerpts in this book just puzzle me and make me wonder if this was intended to be fact or fiction. The book says that teens are all wearing bright colors now and almost no teens wear black anymore. Just go out to a local high school and look for yourself--you'll notice that black is all around and most, kids, are indeed wearing black or at least non-vibrant colors--black clothes and also black shoes, black backpacks, black folders and black guitar cases can be seen on any campus. Aside from their unfactualness, Strauss and Howe's arguments also lack consistency and cohesiveness. Is this "civic" mindset something Millennials already embrace ("Millennials are upbeat", "Millennials do trust parents and authority"), or is it something they are beginning to embrace and "starting" to show trends in", or is it something they will embrace in the future once they stop following Generation X as they are doing now? Do Millennials obey the authority that is already in power and follow rather than lead, as they so often assert? Or is a "Great" generation defined by deciding on the ideal rules itself and enforcing them on all of society, distinguishing such generations as GI and Silent--as Strauss and Howe say is part of the Millennial culture when they argue that these teens will introduce drugs like marijuana into the Establishment and influence societal norms with their own attitudes for decades to come? There has to be a reason substance abuse hasn't declined the same way teen pregnancy is, which itself should prove that teens are not law-abiding, and Strauss and Howe completely change their argument around in explaining it. Some of the generalizations about generations seem to be pulled out of thin air. The generation that came of age with Catcher in the Rye and Rebel Without a Cause was famed for its all-time conformity in youth? What basis do they have for their premise that Generation Xers were diehard individualists in their high school years, being completely diverse, as if they weren't divided into popular students and "geeks" or "losers" and didn't judge each other by conformity to expensive fashion? Why do they think that the jocks in high school are less typical of the 80's than of the 00's? And where are they getting the
decline of Calvin Klein from? Sadly, this book neglects to mention entirely any statistics contrary to the main illusion of a credible thesis it is trying to create. There are parts about today's youth being heavily structured, seeking tradition, and drawn towards activities chaperoned by adults, but no mentions of sources like the May 2000 Newsweek cover story on teens, whose findings negate several of their claims. The book does point out some positive points about youth culture, but one needs to examine the big picture--that the book as a whole is not all positive, and sometimes just made up--and show it with no strings attached.
Rating:
Summary: For what it is... it's wonderfully well-researched...
Review: ... and for what it's not, it's a dissappointment. The authors here have outdone themselves with incredible research culminating from movies, music, the media explosion, to paint a picture of postmodern kids that is encouraging and stimulating. They are Net-Gen's cheerleading squad... reminding the kids that they have more power today than any generation beforehand, particularly in numbers and in technological know-how. What's dissappointing is its lack of any objectivity. The authors admitted that they have children who are in Net-Gen, and I suppose they wanted to write in a way that would influence their kids, and kids of all ages, to become leaders. However well-meaning, this taints their efforts. (And tho this is not mentioned, I wonder if they harbor any guilt for defining "Xers" as a slacker generation, only to see their prophecy bloom before their eyes). Only in afterthought does its problems evidence themselves... For example, they overplay their hands about the popularity of "Clean" bands such as Britney and Backstreet Boys. What's glossed over is the ramifications of groups like Korn and Limp Bizkit, and artists like Marilyn Manson and Eminem. The authors presume that these are passing fads. I presume they presume too quickly. (And further, it's awfully naive to presume that Britney "I'm NOT THAT INNOCENT!" Spears and Backstreet "I Want it THAT Way" Boyrs are, in fact, clean music). Another example is their too short analysis of religion in Net-Gen's lives. Yes, their well-behaved and religious in general... yes, they admire Mother Teresa and the Pope, but the overemphasis on tolerance can leave a nasty residue, at the expense of philosophical, universal absolutes. Whether you believe in absolutes in not is not the point, it's that this is a seismic change in religious thinking, totally ignored, perhaps for another book. So why am I giving this four stars? Because every study of a generation is bound to be too exhaustive for one book. There will not be a definitive book on Net-Gens, but if you were to read a couple of books, this should be one of them.
Rating:
Summary: Provocative, but problematic at best
Review: It's true that there are such things as trends, and often these can be quantified. But Howe and Strauss go way too far in overgeneralizing about a group of, let's face it, MILLIONS of young people. Furthermore, the authors' personal biases are so blatant and pervasive that I'm almost tempted say this book is downright irresponsible. It certainly is of little value beyond being a provocative conversation starter. However, I like the fact that they are bucking the "I weep for the future" trend. If nothing else, they deserve kudos for that. Teenagers of every generation have always been short-changed by their predecessors, who have typically had little faith in them. That has always been a mistake, with every generation to date. It's time we as a society stopped that and started supporting and encouraging our youth instead. Because these kids do have the potential to collectively accomplish some great things, as every generation always has. The fact that there are such dichotomous reactions in this forum about the book's veracity is not necessarily a tribute to its quality, as some reviewers have fallaciously claimed. Rather, it merely demonstrates that trying to characterize a huge group of people is a dubious, if not impossible, endeavor. If our relatively tiny sample of reviewers who are Millienials themselves contains such opposing views on the accuracy of this book, then how can we possibly swallow whole the book's generalizations about literally millions of people? I heard an interview with Neil Howe by John Merrow in which Merrow did an excellent job of pointing out that Howe has arbitrarily chosen to emphasize certain statistics over others. A couple of examples: Howe has chosen to downplay the skyrocketing rate of cheating in high schools as well as the unprecedented level of brand-aware consumption that the advertising industry has successfully cultivated in today's youth. What Merrow failed to point out was the bias built into Howe and Strauss's judgment of this and previous generations. For example, they seem to feel that because this generation appears to be more concerned with what Howe described as "left-brain endeavors," that makes this generation somehow "greater" than previous ones. First, who are Howe and Strauss to pass judgment on millions of people about their value? Second, how can anyone claim that one generation is greater than another? (Especially when the definition of what constitutes a particular generation is entirely arbitrary.) Third, what makes "left brain" accomplishments more valuable than "right brain" ones? It is only the personal opinions of Howe and Strauss that matter here, yet they want you to believe that their conclusions are scholarly and objective and therefore somehow true in an absolute sense, when this is simply not the case. Come on, people, especially you young Millenials yourselves. Do not take what these guys say at face value just because the words are printed in ink. Think critically about what they are saying. Ask yourself, what motivates these authors to disparage every generation between the "GI Generation" of WWII and today's youth, while portraying those two generations as unassailable paragons of greatness? Because rest assured there IS an answer to that question. By the way, one reviewer claimed that, unlike youngsters 10 years ago, the fact that Millenials "care about what people think of them" is proof of "massive change." That claim is both naive and specious. Young people have ALWAYS cared about how they are viewed, even the occasional rebel whose stated goal is complete independence. It's just part of being human.
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