Review by Booklist Review
Readers who question the media's facile stereotypes of Generation X will find author and lecturer Loeb's probing analysis, based on years of research and interviews on more than 100 college campuses around the country, perceptive and enlightening. Thoughtfully exploring the attitudes of both apolitical and activist students, Loeb examines the core convictions--on individual power and responsibility, on human nature and history, and on the workings of U.S. society--that lead many students to declare "I'm not that kind of person" when urged to get involved, while a growing minority responds with "I had to take a stand." Loeb also sketches the changing context in which college students make those choices, addressing the roots of a growing campus activism (including economic pressures that threaten to close college doors to working-class and middle-class students); the distortions and disinformation central to a conservative attack on "political correctness"; and activist students' postcollege search for meaningful ways to maintain their commitment to the common good. A wide-ranging, insightful study of the complexities obscured by reductionist notions like "slackers" and "the MTV Generation." ~--Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Compared to their 1960s counterparts, contemporary college students have been described as selfish, greedy, apathetic and unconcerned with higher ideals. But the truth, Loeb (Nuclear Culture) asserts, is more complicated. Interweaving insightful analyses of major social and political shifts during recent decades with anecdotal personal histories of dozens of students at more than 100 campuses in 30 states, Loeb asserts reasons for the apparent apathy of this generation and finds that activism is still important for college students. Although he writes from a partisan viewpoint, plainly believing that more students should be politically involved, the author sympathetically treats even those subjects who are not, while exploring the various social and economic pressures that have prevented many from taking activist stands. Replacing a facile stereotype of a self-centered generation with a more complex portrait of a diverse group of individuals facing a host of both personal and systemic challenges, this study is revisionist social history at its best. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An itinerant campus speaker reports back from interviews at more than 100 schools, arguing that students are not ``simply greedy or indifferent,'' as popular images suggest. Loeb (Nuclear Culture, 1982, etc.) covers a lot of ground, mixing report and essay. He begins by analyzing campus apathy: He meets apolitical students who prize individualism, call activists self-serving, fear downward mobility, lack historical perspective on the 1960s, and think their classroom life disengaged from reality. Loeb, a longtime activist himself, doesn't damn them but suggests that our larger culture encourages political complacency. He goes on, however, to explore activism, focusing on situations, not individuals. Some examples: ``Greeks for Peace'' at the University of Michigan, divestment efforts at Columbia, a tuition protest at the City University of New York. All of these efforts were launched by students inspired by a variety of stimuli: family, teachers, campus comrades, or a reaction to ``America's increasingly visible crises.'' Loeb concludes that this is a generation with a ``contingent'' future, in which small but growing numbers are trying to work for a better society. His own observations are generally astute, recognizing that today's black campus separatism has its historical precedent in the 1960s, criticizing PC-baiters but also acknowledging that identity politics privileges race and sex over class. However, he covers his ambitious topic broadly rather than deeply, failing to elucidate campus tensions over race and sex or to say much about curriculum reform--though he does observe trenchantly that the political activists he met were largely untouched by much-derided theories like deconstructionism and postmodernism. Better on big pictures than case studies, but a worthy response to Illiberal Education and other portrayals of campus life today. (First serial to Vogue, New Age, Sierra, Mother Jones; author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
