text: Did you ever know someone whose life was just "perfect" ?? Someone who went to college, got married at age 23, found a great job with valuable stock options... Someone who settled down in a house in a nice city at age 25 or 26, started a family a year or two later, and who now seems to "Have it All" ?? Well, after World War II, this happened to JUST ABOUT EVERYONE in the Silent Generation, and it happen to MOST in the boomer generation, and it's happening to JUST ABOUT NO ONE in Generation X. This books speaks to members of Generation X and describes the suffering and coping mechanisms for these people.
  
  This book, now 15 years, is about a generation that was sold down the river by its elders - Generation X. The book describes 3 young people, Andy, Dag, and Claire, who visit palm springs and tell stories of their lives and of their friends who are suffering in life. The author Douglas Coupland is actually telling stories from Vancouver British Columbia, one of the first cities in North America to be sold out to foreign economic colonizers from Hong Kong (who escaped to Vancouver to avoid the 1997 mainland takeover.) In this city, the worst 1100 square foot fixer-upper house costs a third of a million dollars, or 10 years of take-home pay for a mid-career household.  Economic success is impossible in the physical confines of the city - the system is rigged against everyone except rich immigrants and the existing upper class of blue-collar boomers who purchased homes in the  1970's and 1980's. Many aspects of the book (such as "Reverse Sabbatical", "McJobs", etc.) reflect the severe economic conditions faced by high-achieving intellectuals who go nowhere economically in that city.
  
  In my grandparents generation, all you had to do was to go to college. In my parent's generation, you needed to go to college and become a successful professional. In my own generation, you need to co-found a startup company and be among the 10% of founders who can sell off the company or have an IPO. Do you notice something here? Yes, it's getting more and more difficult to be marginally successful in America.
  
  Because Gen X'ers find that traditional paths to success - hard work, taking chances, saving and investing - don't work any more, they resolve to live like their parents by either living WITH THEIR PARENTS or by borrowing money endlessly and hoping for a miracle. Fiscal irresponsibility is at an all-time high, and has squandered everyone's future! 
  
  In this environment of perpetual economic slavery, Coupland counsels Generation X'ers to break free of the traditional career models that have been rigged by their elders for failure. Coupland counsels us all to re-examine what is success in our life and how to achieve it.   This book is a call to enlist in a class warfare between gen-X'ers and their elders!  In many ways, this book is similar to "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maughen or "The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living", in other words, redefine your notion of success in the world, while waiting for our evil society to implode in upon itself, which must surely happen in the near future ..
  