From the author of the critically acclaimed England’s Dreaming, a landmark cultural history of youthTeenagers—as we have come to define them—were not, award-winning author Jon Savage tells us, born in the 1950s of rockers and Beatniks, when most histories would begin. Rather, the teenager as icon can be traced back to the 1890s, when the foundations for the new century were laid in urban youth culture.Teenage: The Creation of Youth Cultureis a monumental cultural history that charts the spread of the American ideal of youth through England and Europe and around the world. From Peter Pan to Oscar Wilde, Anne Frank to the Wizard of Oz, Savage documents youth culture’s development as a commodity and an industry from the turn of the last century to its current driving force in the global economy. Fusing film, music, literature, diaries, fashion, and art, this epic cultural history is an astonishing and surprising chronicle of modern life sure to appeal to pop culture fans, social history buffs, and anyone who has ever been a teenager.

Jon Savage is the author of the celebrated England-'s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, winner of Rolling Stone-'s prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. He has written widely for American and British newspapers and magazines on music, pop culture, and social history.