Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide

by Lucy Rollin

Decade by decade, this resource offers an overview of all aspects of American teenagers' lives from 1900 to 1999, as they evolved through the century. Using a variety of sources from sociological studies to popular magazines, this work shows how teens have responded to the political events that have characterized each decade. It also describes the patterns that have affected their home, work, and school lives, patterns of dating and sex, trends in alcohol and drug use, and teen tastes in books and movies and use of slang and fashions. Seventy illustrations make the personalities, interests, and media of each decade come alive for students of history, literature, and popular culture.

Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades chronicles the evolution of teenagers through the bobby-soxers of the 1940s, beatniks of the 1950s, and hippies of the 1960s, to the independent and outspoken teens of the 1990s. With photographs of teens, anecdotal information, and statistics, Rollin pulls together sources on fashion, slang, film, radio, and music. She confirms the great impact that rock music has had on teen life since the late 1940s as it traces the evolution of favorite performers and styles. She summarizes the patterns of youth freedoms and adult fears that resulted in such public efforts as the Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency in the 1950s and the attempts to label rock concerts as dangerous in the 1990s. She also demonstrates that the teen violence that seems to characterize the 1990s is not new. Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades is a must for answering the question of how teens lived during each decade and how each decade has influenced teens' lives today.

Genres: Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 1999

Reviews

[Shant]

I remember in high school every year when I'd get a new history textbook, I would sometimes just read the last chapter in September instead of studying for the first quiz or test. I guess if you're reading any books at this point in time, you're reading for comfort, but this book was really good for that light textbook wallpaper feel. If you're a high school history teacher and you'd want to add some levity to the World War II or Great Depression units, this book is pretty good. If you like reading the Useful Notes on TV Tropes but you'd like for it to count in your Goodreads Reading Challenge, then this book is good.

At first, I wanted to rush through the first half of the book to get to the Forrest Gump era of history (junior year US history nostalgia is creeping up on me), but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I liked reading about more random things like house sizes and the most popular books. It was interesting towards the end of the book when there began to be public opinion polls from teenagers.

I guess this is more about culture as a whole but some of the stuff covered in the book weren't exclusive for teens (Bad example but if a 2000's chapter would talk about the movie Avatar or Lost), and there weren't really distinctions for what part of a decade was from point in it. Also, I feel like comic strips were separated from the rest of the literature section.

[Christine Sobowale]

I love pop culture in any format--podcast, documentary, exhibit, movie, etc. It's gratifying to learn about the political, social, and cultural events that unite a group of people. I've always studied pop culture on a broad scale, but reading Lucy Rollin's "Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades" allowed me to learn about pop culture from a teen's perspective from 1900-1990. This book was so cool and I know many people would categorize 1990 as "old" but this book definitely services adolescents today because it illustrates the people, things, and events that were the backdrop which had a significant influence on contemporary pop culture.

[Stacie]

Even though this book says "Reference Guide," it can be easily read through cover to cover. Although there is a lot of familiar information in this book, there is still a lot that I learned about. Very interesting to see how culture changed throughout each decade, the author did a nice job of that.