radical approaches have presented a seriesof `crises' about young people in relation to, among other things,unemployment, `teenage pregnancy' and `delinquency'. This bookconsiders research in psychology, sociology, education, criminologyand cultural studies in order to assess these accounts. The author offers a critical review of a wide range of findingsabout young people in areas as diverse as education and training,leisure, family life and sexuality. She shows that whilst youthresearch texts do not reflect young people's experiences in anystraightforward manner, they do indicate the various complex andcontradictory ways in which `youth', `adolescence' and specificgroups of young people are represented in contemporary westernsocieties. In so arguing, she presents new terms for thinking aboutthe position of young people today. This is an important new text accessibly written for students ofsociology, social psychology and contemporary culture in bothBritain and the USA. It will also be of great interest to socialscience researchers in a range of other disciplines.

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