SLACKONOMICS, by Lisa Chamberlain. DaCapo Press, July 2008, 224 pages, hardcover, $25.

Arguing the meld of culture, history and economics as it relates to a group of people is great sport for all who care to play, and it's as complex a game as the player's wit and education allow. Former Free Times editor, New York Times and Salon contributor Lisa Chamberlain is a respectable player, and in her first book takes a crack at convincing its readers that her generation's response to American pop culture and capitalism can continue the national process of reinvention and, in the book jacket's words, "save us from economic ruin." This doesn't seem intended as irony.

Slackonomics: Generation X and the Age of Creative Destruction looks at the generation that bridged the analog-to-digital gap through its TV, music, movies, books, relationships, marital and parenting choices, where they choose to live, and their economic prospects. Its title and the definition of its subject matter both come from seminal works of pop culture from the early '90s. The words "slacker" (given its current place in the lexicon by Richard Linklater, whose 1991 film looked at the lives of the overeducated underemployed) and "Generation X" (coined by Douglas Coupland whose 1991 novel of the same name took a grittier look at the world post-baby boomers were born into and how they responded to it) — lost their shine of novelty years ago.

But this book — which examines the development and maturity of what those works predicted - couldn't have been written back then. It's not a visionary look at a generation, but a journalist's take with ample references and reportage on how people who came of age in the ensuing decade-and-a-half actually fared.

Starting from cultural benchmarks like the above-mentioned movie and book and Nirvana's influential album Nevermind, Chamberlain is most lively discussing the culture and cultural trends of the '90s. She then goes on to synthesize, referencing an extensive library of books and articles on everything from the riot grrrls to new urbanism to economic theory, including Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which defines a process of "creative destruction."

Chamberlain's lively style and liberal palate of material informing her argument are a strength of the book. Its ambitious scope — which leads her to abrupt shifts from Gen X views on marriage and parenting to the growing fashion for new urbanism — gives it an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel, which is compounded by shifts in voice which happen when she quotes some of her sources at length - at one point yielding the floor for an entire chapter.

For Clevelanders familiar with the history of this newspaper, there's plenty that's familiar. Besides the author, former Free Times art critic Lyz Bly appears in a chapter about Gen X feminism titled "Cunt." Former Free Times staff writer Sandeep Kaushik is quoted for the aforementioned entire chapter, which is about his grown-up maintenance of a family by plying his writing skill as a political/communications consultant, all the while retaining his never-grow-up persona in a city whose creative economy allows for that (Seattle). It's another accomplishment that the book does all this without mentioning Richard Florida.

In the end she struggles to connect all that background to a solution to the crises that inspired it: the social, environmental and economic effects of globalization, peak oil, and a generation's alienation from politics and mainstream society. She ends hopefully, if not concretely: "When the circumstances become too dire to ignore, we will be forced to address the unsustainability of this imbalance, and people will be amazed at how quickly the will of the common good comes forcefully back into play."

Let's hope so.

SLACKONOMICS, by Lisa Chamberlain. DaCapo Press, July 2008, 224 pages, hardcover, $25.