Generation X

Generation X is Douglas Coupland's classic novel about the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960s—a generation known until then simply as twenty somethings. Andy, Claire, and Dag, each in their twenties, have quit pointless jobs in their respective hometowns to find better meaning in life. Adrift in the California desert, the trio develops an ascetic regime of story-telling, boozing, and working McJobs—"low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry." They create their own modern fables of love and death among the cosmetic surgery parlors and cocktail bars of Palm Springs as well as disturbingly funny tales of nuclear waste, historical overdosing, and mall culture. A dark snapshot of the trio's highly fortressed inner world quickly emerges—peeling back the layers on their fanatical individualism, pathological ambivalence about the future, and unsatisfied longing for permanence, love, and their own home. Andy, Dag, and Claire are underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable. They have nowhere to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie.

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.

In Zero Hour for Gen X, Matthew Hennessey calls on his generation, Generation X, to take a stand against tech-obsessed millennials, apathetic baby boomers, utopian Silicon Valley “visionaries,” and the menace to top them all: the soft totalitarian conspiracy known as the Internet of Things. Soon Gen Xers will be the only cohort of Americans who remember life as it was lived before the arrival of the Internet. They are, as Hennessey dubs them, “the last adult generation,” the sole remaining link to a time when childhood was still a bit dangerous but produced adults who were naturally resilient. More than a decade into the social media revolution, the American public is waking up to the idea that the tech sector’s intentions might not be as pure as advertised. The mountains of money being made off our browsing habits and purchase histories are used to fund ever-more extravagant and utopian projects that, by their very natures, will corrode the foundations of free society, leaving us all helpless and digitally enslaved to an elite crew of ultra-sophisticated tech geniuses. But it’s not too late to turn the tide. There’s still time for Gen X to write its own future. A spirited defense of free speech, eye contact, and the virtues of patience, Zero Hour for Gen X is a cultural history of the last 35 years, an analysis of the current social and historical moment, and a generational call to arms.

The acclaimed author explores the hidden crises of Gen X women in this “engaging hybrid of first-person confession, reportage [and] pop culture analysis” (The New Republic). Ada Calhoun was married with children and a good career—and yet she was miserable. She thought she had no right to complain until she realized how many other Generation X women felt the same way. What could be behind this troubling trend? To find out, Calhoun delved into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw that Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age—problems that were being largely overlooked. Calhoun spoke with women across America who were part of the generation raised to “have it all.” She found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. And instead of being heard, they were being told to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order. In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament. She offers practical advice on how to ourselves out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.

The Generation X teenagers must stop ghostly manifestations from wreaking havoc before it is too late.

To aid with a serious shortage of empirical studies on generational human resource management (HRM) preferences, Chapter One aims to add to the discussion in two ways. Firstly, by providing an extensive theoretical systematisation of HRM practices which are likely to be the most effective for achieving high performance from the two prevailing generations in the contemporary workforce (Xers and Yers), and secondly by exposing empirical evidence from a comprehensive study on the topic. Chapter Two explores the engagement levels of Generation X and Y HR practitioners in South Africa. However, reference was also be made to the Baby Boomers in order to indicate the cross-impact among the three cohorts. Shifting to a focus on health between generations, Chapter Three covers the use of online health resources and levels of eHealth literacy among random samples of 996 Baby Boomers from the US, UK, and New Zealand (NZ). In conclusion, Chapter Four argues that in order to have sound mental health, a baby boomer will need to develop ways of challenging the brain and protecting short term and long term memory by regular brain activity and social interactions. Every individual is different but the general guiding principles can be personalised for each individual and practiced as a routine in daily life.

A study of advertisers' and marketers' intentions to aim at a new consumer group - those born between 1961 and 1981 - and dubbed Generation X. The author introduces this new generation, describing how they respond to minorities, business, education, career, family and the media.

In Passed Over and Pissed Off, Dr. Mia Mulrennan reveals that Generation X is fed up and frustrated. Corporate America has turned a deaf ear for too long. Baby Boomers have retained their positions of power longer than anyone anticipated, and are now focusing their attention on grooming the Millennials in order to "leave a legacy" before they retire. Sandwiched between two behemoth generations, the members of Generation X are the outnumbered, seldom-mentioned, underdog generation. Many Gen Xers are tired of patiently waiting for their turn to lead, languishing in non-leadership roles, nose to the grindstone, doing everything right, but feeling overlooked and unappreciated. They have been patiently waiting, but they aren't going to wait forever. Can we stand a Gen-Xodus?