X Saves the World - by Jeff Gordinier (Paperback)

About the Book

Taking off from his controversial "Details" essay Has Generation X Already Peaked? Gordinier conducts an eye-opening journey in his quest to find the essence of X.

Book Synopsis

Read Jeff Gordinier's posts on the Penguin Blog

In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers"have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture-from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business.

Review Quotes

"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

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.